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Watch Dogs coming to Wii U this fall

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Check out our full written Watch Dogs review.

Ubisoft’s open world adventure game Watch Dogs releases for most platforms on May 27, but Wii U owners are going to have to wait a little longer. A new listing on Ubisoft’s Uplay places the Wii U release of the game during “fall 2014,” according to Joystiq.

Back in March, Ubisoft announced that Watch Dogs would be coming to PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One this May, but a release date for a Wii U version was conspicuously absent. The fall date is still a bit vague, but at least now we have a window.

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Ryan Fleming
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Ryan Fleming is the Gaming and Cinema Editor for Digital Trends. He joined the DT staff in 2009 after spending time covering…
Nintendo’s Wii Shop Channel and DSi shops are back online
Nintendo 3DS close-up.

After months of service outages, Nintendo's Wii Shop Channel and DSi Shop are back online.

Nintendo's two virtual marketplace services went down in March of this year. In a statement to Kotaku on the outage, Nintendo acknowledged the downtime but had nothing to report other than that the shops were undergoing maintenance and that it would provide updates on them at a later date. It seems it completely skipped the update and simply put both back online instead.

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I paid $2 a day to play an abandoned Wii Sports sequel
wii sports club retrospective boxing

It’s hard to find someone who was alive during the Wii’s heyday that hasn’t at least tried Wii Sports. It’s one of the bestselling games of all time, and its simple but accurate motion controls made everyone from young kids to seniors feel like they were an athlete for a few minutes. Those are big shoes to fill for any game trying to follow it up, and Nintendo Switch Sports is poised to reinvigorate the formula on April 29 with its reworked visuals and new sports offering.
But did you know that another Wii Sports game came out between those two titles? In the early days of the Wii U, Nintendo released Wii Sports Club, a remake of the classic casual sports title for the failed Wii U console. It enhanced the controls and visuals and tried to give the Wii Sports series a lively community.
Nintendo Switch Sports rekindled my memory of Wii Sports Club's existence, and following the announcement of the Wii U eShop's impending closure, I knew I wanted to check it out and see why this follow-up fell into obscurity. This meant paying $2 a day to access a remake of Wii Sports with broken features that almost no one was playing. Was it worth it? No, but it's a very fitting Wii U game as it's also a product completely overshadowed and made redundant by its predecessor. 
Wii U - Wii Sports Club All Sports Trailer
Pay to play
I was able to find Wii Sports Club on the Wii U eShop and download it for free. While free-to-play Wii Sports seems like a fantastic idea, it doesn’t last long. The first time I booted up the game, I had a 24-hour free trial to try any of the five sports -- tennis, bowling, golf, baseball, and boxing -- that I wanted. I got a bit of tennis and bowling in on my first day with the game, but didn't see everything it had to offer.
After that first day, it was time to pay up. I was given two payment options in-game that would then bring me the Nintendo eShop. I could purchase the individual sports for $10 each, which would give me access to them and their associated minigames forever. My other option was to pay $2 a day to access everything.
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Reinventing sports
Since June 2014, Wii Sports Club has featured the same five sports as the original Wii pack-in: Tennis, bowling, golf, baseball, and boxing. The individual sports play as you remember them in the original Wii Sports for the most part. Swinging the Wii Remote causes your character to make the same motion with a tennis racket, golf club, bat, ball, or fist. Some training mode minigames do shake the formula for each sport up a bit, but none kept my attention for long.
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Overall, these five sports are only slightly enhanced versions of what you remember from the original Wii Sports. It’s a remake that’s not wholly necessary, considering one can play the original game on Wii U via backward compatibility. That’s not a good thing when there are over six times more copies of Wii Sports out there than there are Wii U systems. It's a bite-sized version of the conundrum that the Wii U also found itself in. 
Gone clubbing
Wii Sports Club is so named because Nintendo focuses on in-game clubs. Each day, players can choose to join a club -- many of which are based on states, regions, or countries. These clubs are then ranked individually for each sport, depending on their players’ performance.
I joined the Illinois club, but this didn't have a noticeable impact on my experience because Wii Sports Club's social functionality doesn't really work anymore. While it still tracks clubs' performances online, there's no good way to communicate.
Playing Wii Sports Club is a lonely experience in 2022.

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Nintendo has announced the end of its eShop service for the Wii U console and 3DS handheld. The eShop will stay live on those devices until late March 2023, after which players will no longer be able to purchase games or download eShop apps and services for those devices.

After the closure, players will still be able to redownload games and DLC that they already own, use online play, and download software updates.

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