On the night before Christmas, Nintendo got the worst kind of present – widespread reports of its Wii U and 3DS eShops being down for many of its users. It only got worse as the days went on as the holiday rush of new 3DS and Wii U consoles trying to access Nintendo’s network crippled the servers. In response, Nintendo shut down the eShop for 12 hours to repair it.

The repairs seem to have worked as Nintendo announced yesterday that its Wii U and 3DS eShops are back open for business. Everything seems to be up and running, and Nintendo says that it doesn’t anticipate any further outages. Since the problem seems to have stemmed from Nintendo’s servers being swamped by holiday traffic, the company must have used those 12 hours to increase its server capacity.

Now that the eShop is back up, Nintendo can start working to mend whatever damage was caused to its reputation. Granted, the eShop downtime is nothing compared to the downtimes experience by Xbox Live or the PlayStation Network in years past, but gamers were still frustrated by the fact that they were unable to access Nintendo’s online services during Christmas. While it’s a bit much to ask for a free game after only three days of downtime, Nintendo did offer an apologetic tweet:

We sincerely apologize for this week's inconsistencies and thank you again for your patience and support.

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) December 29, 2013

As for the Pokemon Bank and Pokemon Transfer apps that were delayed by the eShop going down, Nintendo still doesn’t have a firm date for when they would launch. Nintendo only says that it will share more information about the launch “as soon as possible.” Considering that the apps were meant to launch on December 26, you can expect Nintendo to get them out the door as soon as possible. Let’s just hope the mad rush by millions of Pokemon fans to download the new apps doesn’t crush its servers again.

Image via Nintendo/YouTube