The end is nigh for online network support on the aging Wii U and Nintendo 3DS platforms. Nintendo announced overnight that “online play and other functionality that uses online communication” on those consoles will stop working in “early April 2024,” just over a year after Nintendo shut off downloadable game purchases on both platforms through the eShop.
In a brief FAQ, Nintendo clarified that players will still be able to redownload purchased software and download game update data “for the foreseeable future.” Players will also still be able to transfer Pokémon off of a 3DS using the Pokémon Bank system after the planned shutdown. And software that uses the 3DS’s unique Street Pass system will also still work since it uses local wireless communication between systems without the need for a central server.
While there are still some people using this now-classic Nintendo hardware online, spot tests suggest that the player numbers aren’t huge these days. A GameXplain test from the beginning of 2023 found a handful of online players for Mario Kart 8 and Call of Duty games on Wii U, for instance, but failed to find opponents for Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Mario Tennis Ultra Smash. A similar 3DS test by a YouTuber in January found similarly mixed results, though 3DS launch titles like Super Street Fighter 4 and Steel Divers still apparently had surprisingly strong online communities.
Nintendo already shut down the level upload features for the original Super Mario Maker in 2021, well after the release of its Switch sequel. Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon on the Wii U were also taken offline in March for “extended maintenance” to fix a security exploit. Those games remained offline until early August.
The upcoming Nintendo server shutdown will come almost exactly a decade after Nintendo pulled a similar kill switch for the original Wii and Nintendo DS. After that shutdown, hackers got to work reverse-engineering their own private servers to restore online gameplay. For the 3DS and Wii U, Pretendo is an active open source project that has already replicated some of the soon-to-be-defunct server functionality Nintendo plans to abandon next year.
Earlier this year, Nintendo finally stopped accepting repair requests for the system in Japan, years after doing the same in North America. Meanwhile, reports suggest that Nintendo is ramping up its plans to release a Switch successor next year.
