The Nintendo Wii U and 3DS eShop were rendered useless this Christmas as hundreds of thousands of people could not log on because of technical difficulties on Nintendo's end, making for quite a messy gift exchange.

Logging into the eShop or even accessing online features proved to be a nightmare as users experienced a succession of error codes as they attempted to log in into various online features of the two consoles.

Nintendo posted a series of network maintenance messages here, and are working to resolve the issues that most likely were caused because of the sudden rush and influx of people trying to access the online features after receiving a Nintendo console as a gift this Christmas.

Nintendo also released the following statement:
"Intermittently unable to connect currently, due to a high concentration of people trying to access the service. We apologise for the inconvenience, and thank you for your patience."

The gaming company suggests to follow their Twitter to keep checking for updates and to be patient as they are fixing everything.

"Most updated information on Nintendo Network ID (NNID) creation issue - http://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2389/p/430" their last Tweet read.