Nintendo: WiiWare demo program was 'always' limited-time offer

All WiiWare demos were removed from the Wii Shop Channel on January 31. Nintendo of America has confirmed with Joystiq that the WiiWare demo "experiment," which offered a set of five free downloadable demos through the Wii Shop Channel, officially ended on that date. When asked for an explanation, a Nintendo representative told Joystiq, "From the start, the demo program was always planned to be available for a limited time on a trial basis."

While the demo program was expressly announced as a limited-time deal in Japan, no mention of any cutoff date was made in the original announcement for North America.

So, will we ever get to try before we buy again? "We're looking at our results and deciding our next steps," the Nintendo rep told us. Those results, according to a November analysis of WiiWare demos by Nintendo Life, look promising.