While it may be the most wonderful time of the year for some, the servers at Nintendo are having some troubles as Christmas Day has, once again, brought with it a wave of new and old Switch consoles trying to purchase new games and play online.
Some of those who have unwrapped a brand-new Switch for the Holidays are being greeted by an error message from Nintendo when trying to purchase a game, browse the eShop, or even redeem a gift card.
“We are currently experiencing difficulties with our network services,” Nintendo’s Network Maintenance Information / Operational Status page says. “Please try again later. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.”
This outage appears to not only be impacting those using a Nintendo Switch, but also those still playing Wii U or 3DS.
Earlier this week, Nintendo warned that it was expecting its servers to be overloaded over the Christmas weekend, and encouraged those who were purchasing a Switch for a loved one to set it up in advance – which is always good advice for any new console.
However, Nintendo’s warning only mentioned Nintendo Account creation and didn’t mention purchasing games or otherwise. This issue is not a new one, as a similar outage affected many around the world during last year’s Christmas weekend.