Nintendo Takes eShop Down Temporarily

In case you didn't know, the eShop has been offline for three days now. To begin with, all of Nintendo Network went down, including update servers, Miiverse, the Digital Deluxe Program, Club Nintendo, and eShop, but the other services were soon restored. The eShop, on the other hand, is getting hammered, in what is the longest and most embarrassing outage for a major online store front since the PSN hack three years ago.

Why is the outage happening? Several reasons:

• An influx of lots of new systems sold/connected to the internet over the Christmas week (this includes both 3DS and Wii U, by the way)
• The new 3DS update, which unifies 3DS online with Nintendo Network, putting more strain on the servers
• The release of Pokemon Bank (now indefinitely delayed), which first caused the Japanese eShop to crash
• The eShop sales going on right now

Nintendo has issued a statement and responded to this rather shameful outage:

We sincerely apologize for the connection problems in the Nintendo eShop. We understand this is taking longer than expected, but we can assure you that providing a solution is our top priority. We are determined to make sure everyone can enjoy all that Wii U and Nintendo 3DS have to offer. In an effort to manage the high volume of traffic and ultimately improve your experience, we are temporarily taking the Nintendo eShop services offline between the hours of 4 p.m. - 4 a.m. ET. Thank you so much for your continued patience. We will keep you updated.

For Japanese users, the eShop is only accessible from 6am-6pm local time. It will also be offline in Europe at corresponding times. This eShop outage will be global.

It's pretty pitiful, actually. Hopefully Nintendo gets its shit together. I just think that for people who just got a new Wii U or 3DS over Christmas, with one of their bundled games (which Nintendo insists on making digital), this must have made a pretty shitty impression.

SOURCE

Please understand.....

Nintendo don't seem to be doing things that great these days.

Except for the actual making of games

Did they take it down again? I was able to get on the Wii U shop since last night with no issued and the same for the 3DS eShop, I bought Ace Attorney and other things.

No. Not really. I do admit Super Mario (Not quite) 3D is a fucking awesome game. A little to easy though. The only reason I die is because it is hard to judge jumps on the edges and I never look at my shadow...but that is more my fault I think. What else does the Wii U have? Not a damn thing.

(I dont give a shit about handhelds and can't name 5 games on the 3DS)

See, your issue is not giving a shit about handhelds. That's your issue with not being able to name the lion's share of Nintendo's output.

Other great Nintendo developed games on Wii U? Well they literally only released one other internally developed game on Wii U this year, Pikmin 3, and that was pretty awesome.

True, they still make good games. It's just their business decisions.

I'm so surprised.

My problem is I feel handhelds (Mainly Nintendo's) takes away from what they could be making for their console. I honestly feel the 3DS hurts the Wii U more than the PS3,4 and XBOX 360, one.

Would the Wii U be in this hole if the 3DS didn't exist? I doubt it. In my perfect world Nintendo would drop the handheld market and go console only and put their smaller titles on the phone. But it won't happen. I am sure Nintendo will make a new handheld, probably pretty soon that is only a small upgrade in power, and then release another console that is behind the PS4 with an added gimmick.

Whereas you are right in the basics- Nintendo's focus on 3DS hurt Wii U- I honestly think that if they had to drop one market, it should be the console market they should drop. They have always been ultra successful with their handhelds, their handhelds are now powerful enough to do justice to the vision of their games, and their handhelds also get third party support that their consoles lack.

Meh. Everyone experiences server troubles at some point. It's not a big deal if they come back up in a reasonable amount of time.

Really not a big deal.

Wii owners have been affected too (it crashed on me when I tried to download a couple VC games, which I did get eventually) despite that console no longer being supported (and Wii Mini's can't be online anyway). It annoyed me quite a bit.

I guess the only good thing about this is that Nintendo might have sold quite a bit. Boy do they need it.

This sux I was really looking forward to Pokebank and Poketransfer tool

It's funny because it's not really server strain as Nintendos servers are much larger than the Wii and DS's, and yet have less users on than both did. (although in a lot of games there was lag.

But hey whatever excuse people are willing to believe.

@timbers_WSU: lol pretty much....

But how long would a handheld only Nintendo even last? They'll eventually come a time where even that will crack up. Just because they have been popular on the handheld, does not mean it will be that way forever. Fans of their consoles surely learned that lesson.

This is a case where I think Nintendo's hold in the handheld market is being way, WAY overestimated. No doubt it's their most successful market, but no way in hell can they survive on just that.

I'm mad about the Pokebank delay.

Even Nintendo themselves weren't expecting such strong holiday sales. Probably a lot of people got a 3ds/wii u for the holidays and are connecting to take a part of the deals on the e-shop.

Good, I got my 3DS back from repair and couldn't get on the eShop and thought it was still broken somehow. Good to know it wasn't my 3DS's fault.

Well, figures. I shredded my debit card and I'm getting a new one, so I wouldn't be able to buy anything anyway.

Yeah, but three days isn't exactly 'reasonable' by any standard

Well then, thank goodness I connected this morning during that oh-so-brief period of time where it worked. Was able to (finally) download Ace Attorney.

@charizard1605: Not embarassing, since no consumers are actively PAYING for the outage. The PSN disaster was just such a debacle because every paying user got screwed out of that(what was it, a month it was down?) time.

Sucks, though, about the digital bundle games, but I was under the impression that digi bundle games were preinstalled, not eshop codes.

PSN went down for how long those few years ago?

A month

PSN+ existed after the one month PSN outage.

I demand compensatition! I got a 3DS XL for Christmas and I had a $20 gift card for the eshop. I wanted to buy a couple of 3DS titles with it and create my Nintendo Network ID. until this happen. I sure hope Nintendo will gives us something to makeup for this, like how sony did when the PSN went out.

And? Nintendo Network will exist after this outage as well :/

You misread my post.If you were a PSN mermber when that hacking incident occured you did not have the option to pay for a better version of PSN.

Perhaps he's implying that PS Plus came into effect after the outage, which is incorrect. PS Plus launched back in June 2010 whereas the PSN outage was in April 2011.

I find the time stamp a bit, interesting..

Hmmm......

Well, it may not be bad that the Wii u's are infected, unless you use the Mii's alot, which then i guess if it's still down tomorrow that could be a problem.

Well that's incorrect, the hacking incident was in 2011, PSN+ was introduced in 2010.

Yeah so this is really no big deal

It still is- I mean just because the competition's product may have sucked similarly at some time in the past doesn't mean yours should too.

try 3.

so much for the move to digital & always online..our internet atm can't handle it. Guess I was lucky & got through manage to sync my Nintendo ID with 3DS ..had problems but after few tries got through.

lol self entitled much?...unless tis sarcasm. :P

This is a pretty crappy time to let your system go off line. Especially when you're fighting for mindshare on your struggling systems.

Well, got my 3DS on Christmas and as soon as I booted up, I was going to the eShop to setup my NNID, and I still haven't done it yet. Plus I also need to update Pokemon X

It wasn't down for three days for me. Was only down yesterday for me and was fine the days before.

First post nails it. All that needs saying really.

Well, at least Iwata has a lot of practice apologizing and trying to make us understand. I'd be more upset about this if there was actually stuff on the eshop that was worth buying instead on sitting unused in Nintendo's backlog vault.

It won't ever match the epic Sony PSN outage.

There is in fact tons of great stuff worth buying on the eShop- games like Crimson Shroud, Ace Attorney Dual Destinies, Liberation Maiden, Pushmo, Dillon's Rolling Western, Mutant Mudds, Mighty Switch Force, just off the top of my head.

eShop=/=Virtual Console.

Ninten Haters don't buy Indie.

Might as well share this because it seems related:

http://www.gonintendo.com/?mode=viewstory&id=219604

Guess they didn't hire anyone in time.

At the very least, I hope the eShop sales are extended. This is nowhere near as bad as the PSN outage, where you could be getting billed for things from Russia.

Seems like it. That close to Christmas is also a horrible time to announce an open job application (apparently the application itself has been around since around Dec. 12th according to some comments on GN).

That's incorrect. Speaking specifically on how long PSN went down, the PSN outage lasted 23/24 days from April 20th, 2011 to May 15th, 2011.

Approximately a month, not three as you posted. I remember playing my backlog of SP games as well as playing a lot of Wii, PC, and 360 during that time frame.