The Nintendo Wii U was a rather disappointing device with lack of support from the company and expected games seemingly not released on that console, thus making the Wii Shop Channel a rather dull place for fun and games. Nintendo has recently announced that they will be closing down the service on 31 January 2019 and users will not be able to add Wii Points to their account from 26 March 2018.
All is not lost, as it is still possible to re-download purchased WiiWare and Virtual Console titles and transferring them to the Wii U using the Wii System Transfer feature which will also cease to work in 2019. Purchased titles will still be able to run if they are on the hardware but if they are deleted, there might not be a way to download them when the service shuts down.
