Earlier this year, the Nintendo Wii U and 3DS were dealt a pretty big blow when the Kyoto-based company discontinued both systems’ online shops (the Switch’s successor is expected to come out next year, so it makes sense). While that was the case, you were allowed to play games online using those systems. Well, we have more bad news; Nintendo is shutting down the Wii U and 3DS’ online Play months ahead of schedule.
It wasn’t supposed to happen for another four months
Nintendo agreed to keep the servers on for a while longer so that people could get some more rounds of Super Smash Bros. in. When Nintendo said when it was planning on shutting online play down, players thought that they had a while to keep playing. The company stated that it’d keep things going until April 2024, but it didn’t say that it was a definite thing. In fact, the company did say that it could shut them down before the date.
Nintendo’s shutting down Wiiu and 3DS online play a while ahead of schedule
Well, the company said that it could shut it down before April, but we didn’t think that the company was going to start this soon. We’re at the end of December, and people are already starting to see their games go offline. This is a major blow, as these are folks thinking that they had another four months to play their games online.
While this is starting to happen now, it’s not happening all at once. We believe that Nintendo is doing a gradual shutdown of this service. So, it’s possible that more people will start to see it go offline as time goes on. We don’t know which regions will lose connectivity next, so it’s anyone’s guess.
It’s unfortunate, as many people took Nintendo’s April forecast to heart and planned on playing this deep into the Spring of 2024. If you still have access to Nintendo online play, then you’ll want to enjoy it for as long as you can.
2023-12-27 15:07:34