Nintendo finally killing Wii U & 3DS

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

So Nintendo said they be shutting down the store portion only in March 2023, not the download section so can still download what you bought.

• On May 2022 you no longer be able to use credit card to add funds to account via Wii U & 3DS.
  
• On August 2022 you no longer be able to redeem eshop Wallet gift cards via Wii U & 3DS.
  
• On March 2023 you no longer be able to redeem eshop codes via Wii U & 3DS, for any downloadable content, also demos, free-to-start software, passes such as StreetPass Mii Plaza, Theme Shop, Nintendo Badge Arcade and Pokémon Bank, will not be able to redownload.
  
• For 3DS themes there be free themes that remain downloadable via the theme shop.
  
• They did not disclose if they plan to cut off the download section of the platform for the Wii U & 3DS, nor did they disclose if they plan to shutdown the online multiplayer for games on those systems.
  
  https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/57847

[hCerisu ❤]

Originally posted by MADWACZ:

Originally posted by Magma Dragoon:

What does this mean for Pokemon Bank? Will I be unable to move Pokemon from gen 6 to gen 8?

As now they confirmed it’s not going offline and it’s however announced that it will be free for those who have previously have used bank and transfer but it’s going be unavailable for those haven’t used it yet.

Looks like my entire collection is trapped in Kalos, then.

[Kiddiec͕̤̱͋̿͑͠at 🃏]

Originally posted by Dr.Shadowds 🐉:

...

...
• They did not disclose if they plan to cut off the download section of the platform for the Wii U & 3DS, nor did they disclose if they plan to shutdown the online multiplayer for games on those systems.

...

I believe they said they'll leave those up "for the foreseeable future", which I think is a fancy way of saying that they still might later but currently have no plans to do so.

...and it's Nintendo... so "might discontinue this services" actually means "will discontinue this service, just a little later rather than sooner".

They kill all of their services when they feel like moving on.
It's part of the reason why I'm actually heavily disinterested in the Switch & its offerings because whatever parts of it are a service that can be discontinued... they'll just kill it in 5 years...

Originally posted by Crystal Sharrd:

I hate them so much for this. Not only are they actively harming their customers, they've also ensured I won't be making any non-3DS gaming purchases for the foreseeable future.

*lmao* - you used their own wording about the online services staying up.
"For the foreseeable future."

Well-played.

Originally posted by Dr.Shadowds 🐉:

... because at some point they just shut it down to only support new console, and Nintendo does this two times already, ...

I think they've done it more than twice - depending on what you're filtering to :

- NSider forums
- Flipnote Hatena's sharing service
- DSi e-shop
- Nintendo DS WiFi service for online multiplayer of Nintendo DS games
- Miiverse
- Wii e-shop
- & now the Wii U & 3DS e-shops

(They also shut down Club Nintendo & now actively delete your points on the current reward service if you don't use them within a few months.)

Sure, the original 3DS was really old but the newer models, which had their own exclusive perks were a lot younger & thus shorter-lived. There's also the fact that you can see that companies like Valve have only shut down a forum or two (as far as I'm aware), but replaced them with a new one... their service just keeps going - it's almost like you don't need to needlessly shut down your services every 5(ish) years....

And as for my remark about replacements... I can't play Phantom Hourglass or any game with a similar style of gameplay with anyone online anymore. There is no comparable alternative - and they didn't even bother replacing the online multiplayer functionality in a future release. This wasn't an MMO - it's P2P gaming. They absolutely could have done more to allow the players of that game to continue to have their experience on their own terms.



Of course, now they're moving to a monthly payment subscription model for a lot of things, so aside from the main line-up for The Switch, you don't even have 6 years to do whatever you wanted to with what you paid for or wishlisted. Why even bother making a wishlist when they're just going to invalidate it by shutting down their entire store? The whole point of a wishlist is to say "I want to buy these later when I am able to" but not everyone is economically able to just make later purchases be "by the end of the week" or something.

I knew when I saw the recent Switch commercial of a woman with a fancy coat (fur coat?) in a limo & a mansion, and with like... 12 kids, and they're playing Switch & boasting about it ...because it's a Switch commercial... I knew when I saw that : Nintendo isn't for the average person anymore - it's a rich person's console.

[Paratech2008]

I have a Steam account from 2008 when the PS2, Xbox, and Wii were out.

All that stuff save Steam is toast. Even PS3, Xbox 360, and WiiU, toast.

What's the point of consoles that are glorified PC with a locked OS? If you're lucky they might last 7 years then a new model and bye bye all the games.

[RRW359]

Originally posted by crunchyfrog:

Originally posted by RRW359:

Fair enough but as for your last paragraph Xbox did it but GC and DC didn't. The PS2 had one game (in North America at least) that required a Hard Drive and a couple that were better with it but didn't require it. Also it never did full installs and they even removed the HDD slot in later models. The 360 rarely needed them but it wasn't unheard of and again never fully. I don't have enough experience with the PS3 to know for sure but from what I understand it was more common than 360 and never fully but I know all the games I have for it didn't need one at all. To my knowledge the Wii didn't and I think I heard Watch Dogs needed a partial install on wiiU of something like 128mb but otherwise they all streamed from the disk. Also it wasn't completely unheard of for PC games to only require partial installs before Steam came along and there were even some games simple enough that they didn't need installs at all.

As for this I think you are still misunderstanding a bit. I never said the Gamecube and Dreamcast did. They obviously didn't.

But the PS2 and Xbox deefinitely did.

You did have FF XI which was the only game that MUST use the hard drive (and then we didn't get it in the EU), but you could install many many games if you so wished. You weren't required to as it was purely optional but did speed things up a bit.

I've since done it for when I want to play tyhe games I most often return to.

But the whole point of that was to illustrate that the more games you have the more space it takes up and they certainly do.

Both the Xbox and the PS2 do partially install games on their hard drives as well as store saves (well the Xbox stores saves on the drive as well as memory card, if you're so inclined).

The 360 and PS3 defo do require the hard drive to varying degrees. The PS3 especvially as almost every game on there has some preinstall. Not so much with the 360 although it's still many games that do get preinstalled.

There are a few games like later Forza entries where you can choose to install one disc or if you have the two disc edition, you can also choose to add the cars from that extra disc too.

The Wii absolutely you can bung on hard drive as I've done that too because quite simply I don't have enough space on the internal memory to accommodate them. The same goes for the WiiU too.

Basically it's horses for courses, but the bottom line remains that the more games you have the more drive space you're going to need. That's unavoidable.

I brought up the GC and DC because they were contemporaries to the PS2 and Xbox. My issue isn't with games that let you install as an option, if you want faster load times then you definitely should put games on an HDD, I just don't like them requiring it, especially if it's the entire game. I know that supposedly newer games need to have transfer speeds you can't have when reading from a BRD but there's still no reason they can't put keep the sound and videos on disk and Consoles with proprietary solid storage like the Vita or Switch don't even have that excuse.

[Devsman]

Originally posted by Paratech2008:

I have a Steam account from 2008 when the PS2, Xbox, and Wii were out.

All that stuff save Steam is toast. Even PS3, Xbox 360, and WiiU, toast.

What's the point of consoles that are glorified PC with a locked OS? If you're lucky they might last 7 years then a new model and bye bye all the games.

Hm? I still play my PS2 all the time.

[RRW359]

Originally posted by Paratech2008:

I have a Steam account from 2008 when the PS2, Xbox, and Wii were out.

All that stuff save Steam is toast. Even PS3, Xbox 360, and WiiU, toast.

What's the point of consoles that are glorified PC with a locked OS? If you're lucky they might last 7 years then a new model and bye bye all the games.

To be fair there's no guarantee games will always work on newer machines and Steam won't support ancient hardware indefinitely. If I have a wiiU it will always be able to play most wiiU/wii games until it or the game physically stops working.

[Polverrati]

Didn't expect this to be a big deal, I always assumed most Wii U/3DS owners owned their games physically. Honestly, it still isn't a big deal. The 3DS and Wii U are notoriously easy to homebrew, if they wanna shut down their stores then do things that way.

[Kiddiec͕̤̱͋̿͑͠at 🃏]

I won't make someone specific potentially feel singled out for this point by quoting them (which isn't what I'd be doing by quoting them but *shrug* )

A lot of people are saying, "it's old, so it doesn't matter anymore", or something very closely akin to that.

To which, I have to say, are you ready to do the same thing with your parents / grandparents and put them in the nursing home? ...and are you ready for someone to do the same with you?

Should we also disregard history? ...maybe tear down all of the statues & bin your fine arts & antiques. They're old after-all, what value could they possibly have.
Aren't they standing in the way of new things? Aren't new things inherently progress?
Heheh, anyone remember when the Ouya was new? Newer & better, right?

Hey, you know what else is new? NFTs! You know what you have to do new trend fans.

Originally posted by Dracoco OwO:

It's really a shame for the 3DS because it's actually a good console.

It can do plenty of things that the Switch can't.

Many Switch games have better animation & higher resolution graphics but there's more to gaming than animation quality & graphics - I'm not saying that they should go to the other extreme of having only 2 frame animations like Sticker Star did either... but it's like they can't be reasonable about this.

Originally posted by Good Night Owl:

Everyone is upset, but it's important to consider that these devices are discontinued anyway, and as far as I'm aware, no longer supported... and devices that *require* a battery to run have an expiration date. This was inevitable.

What do you mean by ' * require * ' ?

It's lithium ion rechargable - it's also replacable. You can just look up "3DS battery replacement" online & you can buy one for $19 - you just unscrew the back, swap the battery, screw the back on again - and you're good to go.

All devices require some form of power-source, in order to keep running, though.
The power-grid is essentially just a very large battery that we all share.

[🍋 Lemonfed 🍋]

the problem with battery is since the 3DS is discontinued soon the official replacements won't be available and third party replacement are not all as good then the real thing.

[Adversary]

The real question is who is Nintendo going to sue for providing support in their stead? Whether it's making sure their games can still be played in some manner or another, or providing support that they themselves refused to in some capacity, someone somewhere is going to be hit with a lawsuit by Nintendo at some point.

Because they clearly didn't learn from when SEGA did that and got smacked around, repeatedly, until they thought "HMM, MAYBE WE SHOULDN'T TREAT OUR FANS LIKE TOTAL ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥?" Because unless you're in a very specific line of work, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on your customers isn't profitable long-term.

[Paratech2008]

My point is as digital is often the only way to get games, tying them to consoles and not accounts hurt gamers.

My other point was that for nearly 15 years I've upgraded PC and almost everything still works.

Yes PS2 work, but that system had no digital. The PS3 had digital and it won't be supported on the PS4 or PS5. Nothing from the Wii, WiiU, DS, 3DS, will be supported on the Switch.

But PS one, NES, SNES, N64, and other games will be resold on newer hardware instead of accounts transferrable to newer hardware.

[Kiddiec͕̤̱͋̿͑͠at 🃏]

Originally posted by Corthmic:

Didn't expect this to be a big deal, I always assumed most Wii U/3DS owners owned their games physically. Honestly, it still isn't a big deal. The 3DS and Wii U are notoriously easy to homebrew, if they wanna shut down their stores then do things that way.

There is a long list of things that are only available through the 3DS & Wii U e-shops now.

You can't even get them on Switch now. At least when they discontinued the DSi e-shop, you could still buy DSi-ware via the 3DS e-shop, so technically nothing was lost other than the e-shop's song.
Speaking of songs, could the Switch e-shop be any more boring?
I like John Cage's 4'33 but I don't like it so much that I'd rather have it over original store jingles.

Didn't like the e-shop music of the past? Just turn off the volume - it's that simple. However, they had so much personality with how they'd greet you & now they just greet you like your apartment door does, "I ain't doing anything but you can stick your key in here and I might open for you".

Oh, and as for that list...
- Team Kirby Clash Deluxe
- Mini Mario and Friends Amiibo Challenge
- Pokemon Bank
- Mario and Donkey Kong: Minis on the Move
- Mario Vs. Donkey Kong: Tipping Stars
- Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again!
- WarioWare: Snapped!
- Kirby Fighters Deluxe
- Dedede Drum Dash Deluxe
- Korg DSN-12
- Korg M01D
- The entire Box Boy series
- The entire Denpa Men series
- A large number of third party titles, such as Drancia Saga, Mighty Milky Way, & more
- Steel Diver Sub Wars
- Kirby's Blowout Blast
- and any DLC for titles on the 3DS & Wii U (regardless of whether you have a physical copy)

...as far as I'm aware, those (& a bit more) are all ONLY available through the 3DS or Wii U e-shops, unlike a lot of other titles that can still be bought on other systems.
So, all of those titles are going to go away... and anyone who didn't already gain access to them, will have no legally valid means of doing so anymore.

[Star host]

Scumbag company.

[Polverrati]

Originally posted by Kiddiec͕̤̱͋̿͑͠at:

and anyone who didn't already gain access to them, will have no legally valid means of doing so anymore.


:seewhatyoudid:

And that's Nintendo's problem, not ours.
"Piracy is an issue of service, not price" - Lord Gaben

We lose absolutely nothing by having the store taken down, Nintendo does. Take away peoples ability to purchase a product and you leave them with one solution.

[Haruspex]

Originally posted by Devsman:

Originally posted by Paratech2008:

I have a Steam account from 2008 when the PS2, Xbox, and Wii were out.

All that stuff save Steam is toast. Even PS3, Xbox 360, and WiiU, toast.

What's the point of consoles that are glorified PC with a locked OS? If you're lucky they might last 7 years then a new model and bye bye all the games.

Hm? I still play my PS2 all the time.

Yep, I think he's a little off on the details, but I get what he's trying to say. The PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube were the last generation of systems that remain useful long after EOL. This is largely due to physical copies being the method of distribution. I have a pretty big PS2 game collection that I can happily continue to play today.

The PS3, Xbox 360, Wii generation was the beginning of console purchases being ethereal. Once the company decides to move on, your purchases are gone. Even physical copies can be hamstringed or non-functional due to things like day-1 patches.

PC is the only "forever" platform.