April 2024: Nintendo will shut down online play and online communication for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U.

[~Kilza~]

I wasn't surprised by this announcement. After the Wii U/3DS' eShop was shut down back in March, and Nintendo took awhile to get Splatoon/Mario Kart 8's online functionality back up, it felt inevitable they were going to shut down online play sooner rather than later. Honestly, I'm not saddened over it since I never used the Wii U/3DS online that much, but it's definitely the end of an era.

 

[Hunter_Gr33n]

^That's how I feel about it too. I was never really an avid user of online connections for either of them, and it's been almost 13 years since the services were brought up. And again, the community will probably set something up to mitigate the issue in a few years, a la wiimfi.

 

[Romaki]

Sad. I've been trying to find an used 2DS XL for myself, would have loved to use online play.

 

[Beanz]

as someone who used to love playing online, this is very upsetting to hear. i honestly thought nintendo would support online game servers for another two years but in retrospect the 3DS has had a longer run than most consoles, i'm hoping that the community will try to recreate the severs. this is going to ruin new leaf's experience in a way since trading is such an important aspect of the game.

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

Thank you for your concern but I'm aware of that, the hackers have overrun the Pokemon X and Y GTS too. I'm going to ask TBT members for the Pokemon I need instead.

I have two 3DS systems that I use to trade Pokémon to evolve the ones that can’t be evolved By any other methods.

 

[-Raven-]

I’m not surprised but this is still pretty sad. I love the 3DS to death and I was around for the entire life cycle. I got to play it months early at a kiosk, I even saw a Sticker Star trailer that’s lost media now and I played KIU a whole year early. There was a time where I would check the eshop every single night before I went to sleep for like two years. I bought the 3DS around every single time I went out and had my mom carry it to school for StreetPasses.

The 3DS has been a much lonelier experience for a few years now obviously but man this is truly sad to me, I don’t feel like I had a proper childhood and my time on the 3DS and Wii U were the closest I had to that. Swapnote, MK7, pokemon and Wii U online also had some dear memories for me with former friends and a former friend group. RIP

even though the 3ds was my fav the wii u had its own memories. Both consoles saw a rise of indie games, but the wii u community just felt so tight since so few people had it, and i honestly loved the risks they took with ips in that gen. It‘s probably second to gamecube for my favorite first party lineup on a home nintendo console.

the switch as a console is just not it :/ it’s been a totally different vibe since then, and honestly, i’m pretty sure this is one of the things that pushed me away from gaming. it felt like the 3ds and wii u were so rich even if you didn’t have many games (and even with the terrible slow os of the wii u - it had so much personality).

 

[Mokuren]

Honestly I am okay with it. I havn't touched my 3DS in years. Every console era comes to an end eventually and it got supported for a long time!

 

[RemMomori]

The Wii U and 3ds were the first consoles I got to use the online of, playing Mario maker, posting on miiverse, and now it’s going to be all gone now. I know it has to happen eventually but it still feels strange.

Also street pass on the 3ds will still work since it does not use internet. You can still keep downloading you eshop games as well since they never gave a date for that ending.

 

[digimon]

hearing this makes me so so incredibly sad i knew it was bound to happen someday but still...this hit me like a ton of bricks. i guess the eshops closing down was the beginning of the end.....but i thought there'd still be more time considering nintendo had kinda recently brought back the online servers for splatoon 1 and mario kart on the wiiu. both consoles hold a lot of dear memories for me, and i'll still probably boot them up from time to time even after the online play gets shut down

 

[Holla]

It will be a really sad day. I will probably miss Splatoon 1 by far the most I like to jump into it from time to time to remember what the series was like when it started. What makes it even more sad for Splatoon 1 is that it was shut down for a long while recently this year due to vulnerability and it only just recently came back up. Therefore many people who wanted to play to celebrate its 8th anniversary could not. Also it’s 9th anniversary will be just after the shutdown so rip.

It also will really suck for the future of Pokémon transfers. I’ve played all the old games and have pretty much moved everything up I want to but if anything comes up in the future I won’t be able to. It really sucks for people who go back to those older games in the future as well.

Anyways I knew this day was coming as I still clearly remember the day DS/Wii servers were shutdown but it’s still very disheartening.

 

[CozyVillager]

The 3DS has been my favorite out of all of the Nintendo systems I've ever owned so it's really sad to see the online servers shutting down, but it was definitely something I expected sooner rather than later. With Nintendo introducing Nintendo Switch Online it's plain to see their priority is to push everyone into a subscription service and the easiest way to 'encourage' that is to shut off all other options for anyone playing on their older consoles.

For me though I'll always enjoy my 3DS no matter what, online or no, it has a great library of games and I have so much to play even still- I don't think I'll ever grow tired of it. I'm going to enjoy every last moment of online play till April and take lots of screenshots along the way!

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

I love the 3DS and do miss some of the things it could do such as Street Pass. But the Switch is the console I have spent the most money on with new And digital games. Before that it was the 3DS and DS that had that honor but most of those games were bought used.

 

[Introspective Onlooker]

I was still lurking here when I heard the news. Wanted to make a snarky remark to the fact that Nintendo was going to shut down the servers for both systems when they’ve just made the online services for both Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon — probably the most played online Wii U games (perhaps the only ones, as well), playable again after five agonizing months, and two months later, they flat out told us, “You’ve another six months before we pull the plug forever, suckas!” They even threatened to shut these games down permanently if that whole hacker debacle happened again. I guess I better spend as much time as I can on these games… Using the Charger with the Gamepad was a fantastic experience. I’m at least grateful to have played the first Splatoon game before this shutdown happens.

 

[Rubygame]

So guys, we have an official date:
https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/63227/p/605

 

[Foreverfox]

This is really sad, it’s always sad when support for a beloved console is ended. I never had a 3DS, but my younger brother had one and I know several people still love to play theirs. It’s something I might have gotten around to getting eventually to play Pokemon and ACNL. What a bummer. I hope everyone here is able to transfer/complete what they need to in time!

 

[-Apples-]

So the 3DS has been in the twilight zone since late 2020. On April 8th, it enters the dark zone.

 

[paleogamer11]

I’m here rather late, but still, this is saddening. I transferred a Boldore to the GTS a few days ago to get its evolution, but apparently no one gave me said Gigalith. I’ve been doing some trades, and even asked people of a different forum if they were interested. While I understand that this would be happening soon, I’m going to be disheartened by the lack of online communication starting from tomorrow afternoon. I still need to complete my Pokédexes for Moon and US/UM, and the lack of a second device will increase the difficulty of this.

 

[Suguri]

Only 1 day left until the 3DS and Wii U online services close down. I bid you adieu!

 

[kisaker39]

a little under 24 hours... i will be on Club Tortimer constantly until then.

 

[oath2order]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1709418623566020975

It's a sad day but it's been long coming. That said, there are still ways to connect to the GTS and get Mystery Gifts and do ACWW/ACCF multiplayer modes, so I cannot imagine that there'll be ways to still do that for the 3DS.

The thing that I'm not sure how people are going to deal with Pokémon. Some people like to collect all ribbons. For some, that means getting a Pokémon in Gen 3, getting all possible ribbons, transferring them up to Gen 4, repeat, Gen 5, repeat, Gen 6, repeat, Gen 7, repeat, Gen 8, repeat, and finally Gen 9.

It means that this fun quest people do is going to be a lot harder, if not impossible. There's a Gen V softwall, if you don't get PokéTransporter before Bank goes down, and a Gen VI hardwall, where if Bank shuts down, you cannot move Pokémon further into Gen VII. As someone who enjoys doing this myself, it's sad knowing that one of the things I enjoy doing with Pokémon is gonna be over and that I have a timelimit to wrap up what I want to do.

I have been reminded that DS Download Play exists. It's entirely possible that they release a Switch app to bypass Bank.