End of an era: Many Wii online services shutting down in June

Nintendo is slowly phasing the original Wii out of its hardware lineup, announcing today that many of the system's online services will be permanently shut down on June 28.

Don't worry, the Wii Shop Channel will still be available for you to purchase downloadable games and redownload previous purchases. The shutdown applies to the following free online channels, which most users probably aren't using regularly in any case:

• Nintendo Channel
• News Channel
• Forecast Channel
• Everybody Votes Channel
• Mii Contest Channel

You'll no longer be able to send messages or Miis to other Wii owners over the Internet, either. Nintendo also said that "message/data exchange within some games will be disabled" but didn't clarify which games this applies to, or whether online gameplay in popular titles like Mario Kart Wii or Super Smash Bros. Brawl would be affected (Nintendo refused to comment on this matter in response to an Ars request).

Some game consoles manage to live on long after their successors hit the market. Nintendo didn't stop making games or hardware for the NES until 1995, and it kept producing the Japanese version, the Famicom, until 2003. The PlayStation 2 wasn't discontinued worldwide until earlier this year, and it saw a new Pro Evolution Soccer game released in North America last November.

But the writing has been on the wall for the original Wii since well before last November's launch of the successor Wii U, with hardware sales cratering from the record-setting highs of 2007 and 2008. Today's announcement is even less surprising considering that Nintendo started selling an online-free Wii Mini in some regions last year.

Despite selling nearly 100 million systems worldwide so far, the Wii doesn't look like it's going to continue as even a niche player in the market. The only upcoming game currently listed for the system on Nintendo's site is a port of Disney Infinity, which would be the second retail title for the system this year (after The Croods Prehistoric Party). There might be a few more licensed releases to come in the holiday season, but publishers seem almost totally uninterested in reaching out to a potential audience of tens of millions of players who might still be holding on to their aging hardware.

The real risk for Nintendo, of course, is that the Wii U isn't yet prepared to pick up the hardware and software sales slack being let go by the fading Wii. Sales for the new console in 2013 have been historically bad, forcing the company to slash sales projections for the fiscal year. With only a few anticipated titles in the pipeline and impending new hardware from Sony and Microsoft to contend with soon, Nintendo seems to have an uphill battle on its hands to remain relevant in the console market.