Nintendo has been in the crosshairs for fans of its classic consoles and games for years due to the Nintendo Switch’s lack of virtual console offering but the recent decision to shutter the 3DS and Wii U’s online servers next year has taken it to another level.
It isn’t that fans of older Nintendo consoles don’t understand that the Switch, and its eventual successor, are where most players enjoy the company’s products now and it is logical to sunset older online services. It is actually the opposite, where players would happily move on if Nintendo would give them a legal alternative to play games from those systems in a new way or, at the very least, give them a bit more time.
There is very little hope for this to happen, however, and many fans are resigned to simply enjoying the limited time they have left with games that won’t be the same in under a year.
As of March 27, Nintendo took the eShop for both the 3DS and Wii U offline for good—making it impossible to purchase games and DLC in any form. Now, just over six months later, the company has confirmed it is going to discontinue online features for both consoles in April 2024, with the only exception being Pokémon Bank, at least for now.
This will render any online features, such as non-local multiplayer, for every title on both systems completely unusable—and hits quite a bit harder than the Wii and DS Wi-Fi support ending in May 2014. That means no more trading Pokémon with friends over long distances, no more racing in Mario Kart 7, Mario Maker losing all access to custom content, and yes, even the beloved internet browser will finally cease to function.
At minimum, a few hundred games will have their gameplay affected by this, if they weren’t already rendered content incomplete due to the eShop’s closure. This includes the original Splatoon and Mario Kart 8, which just had their online servers restored in August after five months of maintenance.
And with many titles not having ports on other consoles like the Switch or PC, the only way to experience them at their fullest will be through fan-created alternative means as Nintendo shows no signs of making some games available.
This plays into many Nintendo fans’ growing distaste for the company’s anti-preservation approach to its games and general digital media. Every time the company says “Thank you very much for your continued support of our products,” it actually sounds like “Thank you for your continued support of things we no longer want to support.”
A number of players are already using this decision as a point of hope that Nintendo will have a unified eShop experience for the Switch’s successor so problems like this are a thing of the past just like the split between console and handhelds. If that isn’t the case, however, those same users are likely to stop trusting digital purchases from the company entirely.
It is the end of an era, and Reddit user u/attitudeofgratitued summarized it perfectly by simply saying: “The 3DS is my favorite console of all time and while change is inevitable it still feels terrible to see this.”
