Next spring, Nintendo plans to shut down the online service responsible for almost all 3DS and Wii U games, which will affect many players and other connectivity features. According to the company, this also includes online cooperative gaming, online leaderboards, and data distribution.
After the shutdown was announced in early April 2024, online functionality was restored for the Wii U versions of Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon, and between March and August, Nintendo fixed online play issues. After the security breach, these features disappeared.
The service that is still running is Pokémon Bank, a cloud storage service that the company launched alongside Pokémon in 2013.
Nintendo's FAQ states that after sales of Wii U and 3DS games on the Nintendo eShop end in March of this year, players will be able to download patches and re-download games purchased on the Nintendo eShop for the foreseeable future.
There is currently no set closing date, and the company's FAQ also indicates that the company may have to stop its services sooner than expected if an incident occurs that severely impacts the online availability of the 3DS and Wii U consoles. to.
The SpotPass feature is also gone, though Nintendo points out that even after these servers are gone, StreetPass connections between systems in the 3DS family will still work wherever other systems exist.
This planned shutdown, which will occur in early April 2024, comes just over a decade after the end of Nintendo's Wi-Fi Connect service, which ended online services for Nintendo Wii and DS games in 2014.
“You can use StreetPass with StreetPass Mii Plaza pre-installed on 3DS family systems, but you will no longer be able to use features that use online connectivity, such as receiving new gamepads in Puzzle Swap,” Nintendo said.
This also brings an end to Nintendo Badge Arcade, a feature that allowed users to decorate the 3DS' main menu with stickers picked up by the virtual boomerang.
Our FAQ explains what might happen after April. Please note that the default badge data is only stored on the user's SD card. Therefore, players may need to create a backup or risk losing their prizes, which could cost real money.
“The current Nintendo Account system is critical to facilitating the transition to a new generation of devices after Switch,” Nintendo CEO Shuntaro Furukawa said, emphasizing how difficult it will be to rebuild relationships with customers of the new system’s network. .