It’s Christmas morning and in what could be as disappointing as coal in your stocking, is a Nintendo eShop that won’t load.

Sadly, it seems many gamers would prefer coal. As of 9:29 am Central Time, the Nintendo eShop is down.

Is the eShop down? That makes me both happy and sad. Happy because that means a bunch of excited people just unwrapped their switches for the first time. Sad because I have gift cards and I need games! Welcome new players to the Nintendo Switch! pic.twitter.com/pQ947JpbAR — Eric M Hunter (@erichunter) December 25, 2017

It just wouldn't be Christmas without the eShop going down. https://t.co/sRvlmEZ21Y — Jet Jaguar (@JetJagg) December 25, 2017

This is of course likely due to the massive influx of new players hitting Nintendo’s servers in the wake of Christmas morning – where the Nintendo Switch was surely a hot commodity under the Christmas tree this year.

The problem seems to be effecting international players as well:

Dios, ha habido tantas switchs en navidad que la eshop ha crasheado xDDDDDDDDDDD joder — Abdulito (@Abdulitokun) December 25, 2017

Salut @NintendoBE_FR ! Pas de pièces, ni de cartes de crédit. Une solution pour accéder au #eshop #nintendoswitch svp? https://t.co/6kxKYFSYHi — Ludovic Druelle (@LudovicDruelle) December 25, 2017

The outrage is particularly savage as the Nintendo eShop is the primary way to play and download the multitude of Indie Games that are a major selling point for the Nintendo Switch – including games like Golf Story and SteamWorld Dig 2.

This always happens on Christmas. A lot of people connect to the eshop causing it to be under high load. — Xenon (@Xen0n459) December 25, 2017

There’s no word if the outage is affecting system update or firmware update capabilities. However, Nintendo tweeted they are working on the problem and will hopefully have the shop up and running soon:

We apologize for any issues you may be experiencing with Nintendo eShop. We are working on it and hope to have this resolved soon. — Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) December 25, 2017

https://twitter.com/MxNintendo/status/945324972209266688

the official Nintendo website also states the Nintendo eShop is unavailable.

The Nintendo Switch itself has been a run away success, selling 10 million units since debut, and it hasn’t been out a full year yet. The PS4 sold 13 million its first year, and the Switch has a few months to go.

Which is to say Nintendo should have been prepared for a flood of traffic to the eShop. Perhaps they were and there was a glitch. Regardless, there are likely quite a few kids asking their parents to fix an Internet problem they can’t. Lets hope they bought a physical copy.

As gaming moves toward digital services, problems like this are depressingly frequent. If a company, any company, will rely on an online infrastructure, that infrastructure needs to work…especially when the most people are likely to accessing it. A similar problem occurred in 2013

That said, some gamers find the outage bittersweet. If there’s such an influx of new players, that means new consoles sold, and good health for Nintendo, which after the failure of the Wii U, was a question mark.

Eshop crashed for everyone Know what that means? The Switch is under alot of Christmas trees this Christmas — Streak (@MarioStreak) December 25, 2017

Stay tuned for updates regarding the ability to access Nintendo’s digital download hub.