Nintendo has announced it will stop repairing its iconic Wii home game consoles at the end of March this year.
The company says it can no longer get its hands on the parts necessary to bring worn out consoles, some of which will be more than 13 years old, back to life.
“Thank you very much for your patronage of our products,” Nintendo said in a short statement on its Japanese website.
Nintendo says it will stop accepting the repairs on March 31, but it’s conceivable they will stop before that if the parts completely run out.
The original Wii, first released in 2006, remains the Japanese firm’s best selling home console ever, which is quite the achievement considering the company it keeps.
Related: Best Nintendo Switch games 2020
The firm sold 101 million units in total, and it could have been much more had the console been more readily available during the first couple of Christmases, when they were ridiculously hard to come by.
The Wii was one of the most impactful consoles ever released by Nintendo, thanks largely to the inclusive ways it brought non-traditional players to the party. Everyone could have a go, and pretty much everyone did have a swing of those motion controllers during Wii bowling, while Wii Fit was an absolute phenomenon in its own right.
While the Wii U never quite got off the ground, the Wii’s legacy was not diminished by the failure and the successor eventually brought us the Switch too.
Here’s more of the statement (via Google Translate) on the website:
“Due to the difficulty in securing the parts required for repair of the Wii main unit released on December 2, 2006, we will terminate acceptance of repairs on March 31, 2020 (Tuesday). You will.
We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause to our customers, and we appreciate your understanding. Repairs may not be accepted if parts needed for repair run out before the deadline above. Please note.”
Hopefully, third-parties will continue to repair the consoles, and surely we can’t be too far away from a Retro Wii Mini? How old will that make everyone feel?
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.