[UPDATED] Nintendo to Take eShop Servers Offline Tonight for Maintanence

I don't think Nintendo really gauged how much server traffic would increase following Christmas and the release of a Pokémon tool with Pokémon Bank. The Nintendo eShop was down during the holiday on both the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS.

As of today, the eShop has been accessible… sort of. I've been able to get in and download content, but that didn't come without interruption. The service is stumbling a bit, and Nintendo has planned a course of action to make things smooth once more.

In the U.K., Nintendo announced on Twitter that the eShop will be closing for 12 hours starting at 9 p.m. GMT.

In Japan, Nintendo announced a similar plan that will run from 6pm until 6 a.m. local time.

For North America, the company has not announced any plans to take the eShop offline. We imagine that will come later today, and we'll update this story if that's the case.

Hopefully the downtime will let Nintendo address this international problem and get the shop up and running immediately. Folks with new systems would certainly like to buy games.

Before you ask, it looks like Sony is experiencing the same types of network issues. Here's Sony on Christmas Day.

That issue hasn't been 100 percent resolved, either. Steam also hit some downtime over the holiday, though that one has been fixed.

An influx of new users is great for business, but one would hope these companies would better prepare for new customers.

UPDATE: Nintendo of America has now announced that they will shut down the eShop from 4pm ET until 4am starting this afternoon. That news came by way of their Facebook page.