With this, Nintendo's previous Switch devices will disappear permanently from the Japanese company, as its digital store no longer exists.
Nintendo's service wasn't discontinued due to lack of interest, but because it ran out of parts to repair the Wii U. Because of this, console owners can no longer send their broken console to the Big N for repair. It's understandable that the Japanese company has reached this point, as the Wii U has much more complex hardware than the Wii and Switch.
Let's not forget that this platform had a separate controller with a screen called the Game Pad, which was essentially a tablet. This was often prone to malfunctions, but it was not sold separately by Nintendo, so pre-manufactured stocks dwindled quickly, and the more years passed after the Wii U was replaced, the scarcer the Japanese company's reserves became. For this reason, it is not surprising that only seven years after the Wii U was retired (the Switch far outsold its predecessor), the game is already over from this point of view.
The Wii U's online portion was shut down in April of this year. This was preceded by the eShop shutdown, but it was actually done by the Big N in March 2023, when it shut down the eShop for the 3DS as well as the Wii U. When it did, Nintendo claimed that it only applied to in-game online features, so it was possible to download updates and purchase games and DLC “for the foreseeable future.” However, the eShop for the Wii U and 3DS will be shut down, making only about 1,000 digital games unavailable. (Which is why we say that preserving the game is a no-brainer!)
With that, the Virtual Console is also gone. So there's only one way to access old games, but there's a much smaller list of them, since there are so many platforms available to players on VC, Switch Online now only offers the four NES, SNES, Mega Drive, and N64.
source: VGC
