Following the closure of the Wii U and 3DS digital storefronts in March 2023, Nintendo is preparing to turn the lights off on online gaming on both systems. The platform holder has announced that there will be online services for 3DS and Wii U software will be discontinued on April 8, 2024at 1:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT.
This means that any form of online connectivity for 3DS and Wii U games will disappear in six months. All online multiplayer, leaderboards and other “data distribution” will stop, Nintendo said. The only exceptions are Pokémon Bank, a paid cloud backup for your Pokémon collections (which has since been replaced by Pokémon Home), and the Poké Transporter.
3DS and Wii U games will remain playable offline, and you will still be able to download update data and redownload game purchases. Nintendo said online support for third-party games will also end, “with some exceptions.”
“Please note that if an event occurs that would make it difficult to continue online services for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U software, we may have to discontinue the services earlier than planned,” Nintendo warned. Some online outages for the Wii U and 3DS were reported at the end of December 2023.
The 3DS’s beloved StreetPass feature, which exchanges information with other nearby 3DS consoles, continues to work. But the SpotPass variant that uses internet connectivity will not. “For example, you can use StreetPass in StreetPass Mii Squarewhich comes pre-installed on Nintendo 3DS family systems, but you will no longer be able to use features that use online communication (such as receiving new panels in Puzzle Swap),” Nintendo explains.
While both systems have been overshadowed by the enormous popularity of the Nintendo Switch over the past six and a half years, there are still a handful of 3DS and even Wii U games that enjoy the support of small online communities, and that will continue. greatly reduced by being limited to offline play.
The first Splatoon is an example of a notable release that will be reduced to a shadow of its former self after April 8. Commenters on Reddit listed a handful of others that continue to attract online players: Mario kart 8 on the Wii U (despite the availability of the much more popular Luxury version on Switch), Mario kart 7 And Monster hunter 4 on 3DS, and the fourth Super Smash Bros. which was released for both systems. The 3DS’ Animal Crossing: New Leaf still has an audience that can no longer visit each other’s cities in April.
Nintendo has taken both Splatoon And Mario kart 8 on the Wii U offline months earlier in 2023 due to a security issue, but eventually recovered the online services for both games.
After the closure of the 3DS and Wii U stores made hundreds of digital releases permanently inaccessible, the online shutdown for 3DS and Wii U highlights another problem with game preservation in the Internet age: even if games are kept in physical copies and on the internal consoles. storage, they can be hampered by the removal of online services – and this can happen at a platform-wide level.
Nintendo’s move to further mothball its last-gen platforms comes as it begins to set the stage for Switch 2, or whatever the next-gen console will be called, with a late 2024 release looking likely .
Update (January 24, 2024): This article has been updated to reflect Nintendo’s announcement about the exact date and time the Wii U and 3DS online features would be shut down.