Nintendo Closing 3DS and Wii U Shops In 2023, Has 'No Plans To Offer Classic Content In Other Ways' (kotaku.com) 59
Nintendo has announced that in March 2023 the online storefronts for 3DS and Wii U systems will be ceasing operations, a move that the BBC reports has attracted a lot of backlash from fans. Kotaku adds: In terms of people playing and enjoying the games they already own, Nintendo says: Even after late March 2023, and for the foreseeable future, it will still be possible to redownload games and DLC, receive software updates and enjoy online play on Wii U and the Nintendo 3DS family of systems." All of this is expected stuff. The 3DS is 11 years old this year and the Wii U ten, so digital store closures were always going to happen sooner or later. What's shitty about these closures in particular, though, is that both shopfronts offered users the ability to purchase and then own many of Nintendo's greatest ever titles, something you're now largely unable to do ever since the company switched to a subscription model with Nintendo Switch Online. The announcement post from Nintendo initially had an FAQ question, which read, "Doesn't Nintendo have an obligation to preserve its classic games?" The company deleted that part from the blog post. Kotaku adds: "We currently have no plans to offer classic content in other ways," is an incredibly shitty thing to read, because under zero circumstances is a subscription-based model an acceptable substitution to actually owning a game.
Wii sports (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Using a stick to send balls into holes? That's not very family-friendly!
Re: (Score:2)
Mario Golf Super Rush is a really fun group golf game; it's simple enough for pick-up-and-play, but rewards time put in to learn it's nuances.
All sorts of weird modes and variations to play with, too, but a room full of people howling as you bounce balls around New Donk City has it's own charm.
Piracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Grandiose world domination plans like that exist everywhere.
But for the same reason the idea of world domination is stupid, those tend to fail as well.
Too much power in too few people's hands always end in terrible ideas.
Re: (Score:2)
Fortunately the Wii U and 3DS shops have been completely compromised and all content backed up. I don't have a 3DS but the Wii U is fully compromised too, so you can easily download games from the official Wii U store (without paying!) and run them on your hacked console. All you need is a USB flash drive and a free copy of Brain Training from said store. Nice of Nintendo to make that specific game free, as it's one of the ones with a save game exploit that opens up the whole console.
This is why piracy happens... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nintendo designed the system to die. "Piracy" becomes necessary for people to back up and maintain their library of the things they purchased. Lather, rinse repeat.
"Piracy" is a better (AS IN more functional, more reliable) product than the "real" product. There you go. That's why "Piracy" exists.
Re: (Score:1)
So do not buy from Nintendo. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So do not buy from Nintendo. (Score:5, Insightful)
Gamers never learn. It is why we have the bullshit "Games-as-a-Service" model.
Someday we'll get laws that if a system hasn't been commercially available for X years then ALL the old software on it is no longer under copyright. Sadly too many greedy politicians.
Re: (Score:3)
The laws are going in the opposite direction, copyright terms are getting longer.
By the time any of these games reach the end of their copyright terms, anyone who played them when they were new will be long dead and it's unlikely that any of the original hardware would still be functional. Even if the game was ever available on physical media, the media is likely to be long degraded, and keeping backups and/or circumventing the technical measures designed to prevent you from making backups is illegal.
Most p
Re: (Score:2)
Gamers never learn. It is why we have the bullshit "Games-as-a-Service" model.
Learn what? What terrible lesson are they getting? The world sees an average of 2-3 games released each *DAY*. If you're suggesting a lack of ownership and no long term ability to play some old titles is in some way a punishment that gamers should learn from, I would suggest you are not even remotely a "gamer". Heck I don't consider myself one either, yet I don't have time to play all the games I bought, let alone reply stuff I own from the past.
Branch out and experience something new rather than being sad
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately you are completely missing the smaller and bigger picture. I'll explain:
1. As a professional game dev for 20+ years, and over 500+ games in my Steam Library, I understand the games industry extremely well Thank-You very much. You can stop your projecting that I'm not a "gamer". While I'm not your average "mindless consumer" who buys the latest "Oooh, shiny" you would be surprised at how many gamers ARE selectively in what they buy, play and wait for a game to go on sale first, like myself.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh I'm sure it's syntomic of a larger problem, but you're missing my point. There's nothing for gamers to "learn". They aren't being taught a lesson here. Games are a form of entertainment. That form of entertainment is presently limitless. Being cut off from past ownership or past IP in now is an issue due to fanatical oversupply.
You have 500 games in your library, you should know fully well what it means to have more entertainment at hand than you can reasonably consume. And as such, lack of ownership is
Re: (Score:2)
Boycotts only really work if the interest group that's harmed has a larger economic presence than the offending company. Sustainable/vintage gaming probably does have that collective market, but none of the big traditional players have made a serious attempt to capture the market (retro products mostly suck), so said boycott will likely not shift policy.
One could also argue that if a gamer values sustainability they wouldn't even consider the type of systems that nintendo and sony sell, although I'd acknow
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry steam and other online DRM is not any better.
I find myself buy less and less games, when I do find one, it often dead ends when I see it only available on steam.
I use to buy some of them anyways and crack them so I dont have to deal with the POS steam garbage. Now I don't buy them, but once in a while I receive them as gifs.
I stopped buy blizzard games because of the online crap they did for starcraft 2, and worse for diablo 3.
And my GOG account is littered with many games with online DRM.
Re: (Score:2)
Steam hasn't pulled a lot of content. Telltale yanked a bunch of their stuff due to licensing issues when they went under, and there are a few other examples, but for the most part, once you've bought it, it's there forever. Even if other people can't buy it anymore.
Good luck getting some of it to work though.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Too late. All brands do this.
PC do not. You can buy some really ancient games if you want.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is that many of those games are exclusive to Nintendo systems. If you want to play Mario Maker or Zelda, you have to do it on Nintendo hardware.
Or you can use emulation.
Well then (Score:2)
They should at least allow homebrew at that point.
Stop buying digital games from Nintendo? Got it (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Everything looks normal from here [yahoo.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Did you see the top headline on that link?
Nintendo Switch Hacker Gary Bowser Sentenced to More Than Three Years in Prison
https://finance.yahoo.com/news... [yahoo.com]
Re: (Score:1)
SNAFU - Situation Normal... you know the rest
Re: (Score:2)
I can't imagine there were much digital purchases for those platforms. You have to remember that despite the relative recentness of the platforms, Nintendo's digital shop is basically useless - it really amounts to what online game stores were around the time Steam launched or before the Xbox 360's online store.
In other words, terrible, and other than virtual console games, there really wasn't much other content on there.
And no, the Nintendo Switch isn't a useful example - Nintendo's online store has improv
Re: (Score:2)
There was more to it than that. Did you ever play Dragon Quest IX?
Good thing (Score:2)
Thanks Nintendo - Online Subscription gone.. (Score:1)
You made me make the effort to cancel my "Online Subscription".
$54AUD per year to have the ability to play games you own (even physically actually own) online.... fucking rip.
Can't wait to Steam Deck is available in Australia - I have a cunt load of purchased games on there, and I don't have to pay to use them online..
Re: (Score:1)
I have a cunt load of...
If that's supposed to be a sizeable unit of measurement, your cunt experience may have been sub-optimal.
I wish they could just give it away. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with online services is once the company finds them too much of a hassle they will just stop them. Leaving the customers who use them in the dark. They should at least give them away to either an other company who wants to keep the old games running, or to an organization who is interested in keeping them running.
There is still new development for the Commodore 64 and the Apple II. Granted it is not from big titles, but a bunch of small companies catering to the fans of the old tech. I wish we had that for online services.
Re: (Score:2)
They don't want the competition either. A lot of those old games are downright awesome and often times better then new games you can buy. Nintendo doesn't want a second-hand market and it would prefer you keep buying new games every year and never go back to your old games.
Re: (Score:2)
I would play C&C: Red Alert again.
Unfortunately, it no longer worked on Windows 7.
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder if it would be viable for another company to take over. The Wii U is fully compromised and piracy is almost as easy as buying from the official store.
I suppose a third party could patch the problem and require an update to play anything online, but that's probably a lot of engineering work for very little return. It's risky too, if the update bricks consoles (and every update does, because at least some will have flash memory errors) they could have legal issues, not to mention PR problems.
Re: (Score:2)
if the update bricks consoles (and every update does, because at least some will have flash memory errors)
Nintendo didn't use an A/B system or a journaling flash filesystem? Now THAT is planned obsolescence.
Re: (Score:2)
They probably do, but stressing anything will cause a certain proportion of them to fail.
Most of those games aren't available anywhere else (Score:4, Insightful)
What the summary fails to make clear is that when Nintendo shutters the 3DS and Wii U store, a lot of games that were available on the "virtual console" for those platforms will simply no longer be available for legal purchase.
Even if you opt for the more expensive Nintendo Switch Online subscription (there are two tiers, the more expensive one gets you Sega Genesis and N64 games), those "virtual consoles" contain a fraction of the games that are available on the 3DS and Wii U. Plus, strangely enough, the N64 emulation used for Nintendo Switch Online is notably worse than that used on the Wii U. It causes some strange graphical glitches in Nintendo's own games.
For some actual numbers: according to the Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], the Wii U VC has 311 games total in the US, while the 3DS VC has 223.
Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack (yes, that's what they call it), has a total of 140 (59 NES, 51 SNES, 11 N64, 19 Sega Genesis). And for the most part, Nintendo has stopped adding to this library, and have made it incredibly unclear if they plan on adding more stuff later or not.
Re: (Score:2)
Nintendo are being cheap with their N64 emulator. The first version for the Wii was excellent. It got ported to the Wii U and picked up a few issues. Then it was ported to the Switch and was terrible. It seems like they paid some contractor to do the port and they did it as fast as possible to meet the Nintendo Quality requirements, i.e. doesn't crash. Fidelity was not a consideration.
Re: (Score:2)
Since the Steamdeck should be perfectly capable of emulating platforms up to and including the Wii U, with community emulators that have had so much more care put into their development and accuracy, the Switch looks increasingly unattractive for "classic gaming".
Bad Business (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly, how much does it cost to keep this up and running? It can't really be a huge expense. Sure, they may not be breaking even anymore on it, but they should factor in the goodwill that it buys them. If they announced keeping it open for five more years instead of one, it would sound like a huge positive for their loyal customers. Maybe they could find a way to make it cheaper to run and keep it up even longer.
This sounds like it's really designed to push WiiU users to move on to newer platforms, on the assumption that Nintendo will end up making more money off the customers that way. Instead, they should look at keeping their customers happy, and ensure that they will want to stick with Nintendo even if they're slower to move to a new platform. (My impression is that Nintendo has more of the younger kids, but they tend to move to XBox or PlayStation by High School, but my sample size is in the anecdote range.)
Re: (Score:2)
Honestly, how much does it cost to keep this up and running? It can't really be a huge expense. Sure, they may not be breaking even anymore on it, but they should factor in the goodwill that it buys them.
I can't imagine that it costs them much of anything if they're really not selling anything. I mean, the cost of running a store is largely defined by the data rate, and fewer users mean fewer downloads, which means less data consumption. At some point, it drops down to the cost of keeping one machine in each data center powered up with a giant pile of storage attached. If you can't break even while doing that, you probably shouldn't be in business.
I think it is far more likely that they are doing this to
Updates to games on disc being cancelled too? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
They've said that you'll be able to re-download software you've already purchased, software updates, and system updates beyond that date for the foreseeable future.
Re: (Score:2)
Not condoning piracy etc, but I'll just leave this here:
https://www.cfwaifu.com/wiiu-usbhelper/ [cfwaifu.com]
That link is purely informational, you understand, but TL;DR: don't worry about any games, updates, dlc, etc. disappearing as they've all been "archived" and you can "archive" them yourself directly from Nintendo's own servers with that software.
Ownership (Score:2)
"actually owning a game."
You never, for one second, owned the game.
The owner of a game could legally do what they liked with it. You can't. You weren't the owner.
The case law on this is 100+ years old in some places, starting with things like sheet music and artworks.
You never owned the game.
You "owned" a physical disk containing a licenced copy of the game.
You can disagree with it and apply your own interpretations as much as you like, but you never owned anything of value. And though I quite understand
Not really surprising (Score:2)
Nintendo's online storeplace has orphaned content before. Anyone ever play Dragon Quest IX for the 3DS? It had a feature where people could use in-game currency to buy a regularly-shifting rotation of items from a store linked to Nintendo's online services (DQVC). Mostly it was seasonal or event-based stuff, but there were some exclusive items there you could not get in-game that were required by alchemy (e.g. the Krak Pot) to make some of the game's best equipment.
Access to the DQVC finally died in 2014.