On Jan. 30, 2019, the Wii Shop Channel closed for good — and, with it, access to the deep library of Virtual Console and Wii Ware titles available there.
If you waited too long to use any remaining Wii Points by the end of the day Jan. 29, you won’t get a refund, according to Nintendo.
You’ll still be able to play any games you’ve downloaded, as long as your hardware holds up — but you won’t be able to download them again if you’ve removed them from your Wii storage.
That’s where SD cards come in. The Wii only holds 512 MB, but SD cards up to 2 GB in capacity are supported, as well as high-capacity SDHC cards up to 32 GB. You can even play games directly off of a slotted SD card (this wasn’t always the case — but if you kept your console updated, you should be good).
SD cards also will work for storing games and playing them from the Wii U’s Wii Menu; that’s a way to use the newer Wii U console, which followed the Wii and preceded the Switch but was never as popular as either, to emulate as an original Wii with all its services and software.
If you have a Wii and wanted to transfer its content to a Wii U, Nintendo outlined a process for doing so (complete with a helpful video) — but the option to do this expired Jan. 30 once the Wii Shop Channel shut down; that’s because there’s a transfer utility that must be downloaded from the Wii Shop Channel, and you already know that capability has ended.
