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Nintendo

Nintendo Will Take 3DS and Wii U Services Offline in 'Early April 2024' (engadget.com) 30

Posted by msmash from the end-of-an-era dept.
After closing its 3DS and Wii U eShops earlier this year, Nintendo will shut down online services for those consoles in "early April 2024," it announced. From a report: That will put a halt to multiplayer features, along with "online co-operative play, internet rankings and data distribution," Nintendo wrote. Nintendo's Badge Arcade that allowed users to decorate their Nintendo 3DS home menu will also disappear. The date isn't fixed in stone yet, and Nintendo said it may even discontinue services "earlier than planned."
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Nintendo Will Take 3DS and Wii U Services Offline in 'Early April 2024' More

Nintendo Will Take 3DS and Wii U Services Offline in 'Early April 2024'

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  • New New 3DS when? (Score:3)

    by vadim_t ( 324782 ) on Wednesday October 04, 2023 @11:07AM (#63899613) Homepage

    I want a "New New 3DS". It's actually the only console I ever bothered to buy, because the 3D effect is cool.

    So I want a new, high res version with a better CPU. The 3DS was an excellent start though, and the 3D camera was a nice bonus.

    By the way, for those interested in keeping using it, the 3DS has been well hacked, with various cool features available. But it's best not to update the firmware, since new versions close off the ways the mods have to install themselves.

    • But it's best not to update the firmware, since new versions close off the ways the mods have to install themselves.

      Actually [3ds.hacks.guide], if you can get your hands on a DS flashcart with a flashable bootloader, you can hack any 3DS regardless of the installed firmware version. Installing a current firmware in that case is perfectly fine.

  • I think my 3DS would work if I could find the charger, but my Wii U died years ago. It's too bad; I really liked that concept (and how it arguably paved the way for the Switch) but if felt like it had to be pretty flimsy to have an acceptable price point.

  • This is why I "switched" to the Steam Deck. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by xack ( 5304745 ) on Wednesday October 04, 2023 @11:12AM (#63899627)
    Linux means I can keep playing in the 2030s while Nintendo will shut down the e-shop for the Switch.

    • While I too have a Steamdeck I have to ask you: will you? I won't. I expect my Steamdeck to have a flat battery in 7 years. I expect it will have a cracked screen and broken thumbsticks. One may suggest that I could repair these, but I expect that I will own a Steamdeck II or something better by then.

      No one is crying for the Wii U. It is lying forgotten in the bottom of the closet somewhere while Nintendo people are playing with their Switch.

      There's things to care about for long life, gaming hardware isn't

      • Your steam deck will be repairable and still useful. It would make a nice fpv controller for example. Celebrating waste is childish, why don't you go roll some coal?

        • No it wouldn't. The steam deck is many things but it isn't a comfortable controller. Fun fact, I use an xbox controller over bluetooth with mine.

          Celebrating waste is childish,

          No one is celebrating waste. We're reflecting on the reality that gaming hardware doesn't last forever. Games are entertainment. Entertainment changes with time. There are very few people who cling on to older platforms and replay older titles. The vast majority of people who play games do so either with current gen hardware or one gen previous hardware, and they d

    • Uh... huh. You avoided buying a console which lets you buy games on physical media, which you can play and buy and trade offline without permission from Nintendo or anyone else. Forever. You skipped that in favor of a vehicle for an online storefront.

      Yes I know that the Steamdeck is ultimately just a PC. And that is better than only being a vehicle for an online storefront, I will entirely grant that point.

  • The 'New' 3ds was the last real bit of hardware designed by Nintendo. The end of the era of bespoke custom hardware and toolchains that were fit for purpose.

    Their future direction seems to be along the switch route, off the shelf system on chips that are just overpriced old mobile phone technology.

    A true shame considering over the years many nice things came from Nintendo research and engineering [wikipedia.org] and Intelligent systems [wikipedia.org] (who developed the toolchains/devkits)

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Dwedit ( 232252 )

      How do you define "Designed by Nintendo" if the 3DS GPU was a third-party design by DMP? (Digital Media Professionals PICA200)

      • Realistically it's a sliding scale, and even the 3ds was a lot more commodity than some prior offerings.

        To me switching to a drop in mobile SoC is a clear "you've gone to the other side of the line" moment. No longer unique enough to bother with.

        Where is the line before that? depends on your criteria.

      • PICA200, pronounced Pikachu Hundred. Digital Media Professionals knew what sort of mobile client they were designing their GPU for, just as SGI designed the Reality GPU for Nintendo and ArtX designed the Flipper GPU for Nintendo.

    • Yeah it is sad in a way but inevitable since for the other consoles that era ended with the PS3/360 (and really it was the difficulty developers had with those platforms, especially the Cell processor that likely drove both companies to just get onboard with x86) now but it doesn't make any sense for Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo to reinvent the wheel on CPUs and GPUs when such capable chips are easily available and AMD specifically can spin you up a semi-custom APU or in the case of the Switch, Nvidia.

    • what are you smoking dude (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The newer consoles are designed by Nintendo just as much as the old ones, with tweaked versions of off-the-shelf chips. Silicon Graphics pretty much designed the N64 for Nintendo. None of the Nintendo consoles use mobile phone technology. The Switch and Switch 2 use Tegra chips which are used for high-end smart TVs and tablets. When Switch 2 was commissioned it was specified to use Ampere-based chips which were then state-of-the-art. Yes it takes years for consoles to come out because games need to be ready

      • Silicon Graphics pretty much designed the N64 for Nintendo.

        Yes they did. The design and those chips were however not a typical SGI system. One might even say "bespoke custom hardware and toolchains that were fit for purpose"

        None of the Nintendo consoles use mobile phone technology.

        The nvidia tegra line first appeared in mobile phones, and at least by their wiki page, are still used in mobile phones

        The newer consoles are designed by Nintendo just as much as the old ones, with tweaked versions of off-the-shelf chips.

        Nobody is faulting nintendo for modifying a 6502 or the use of picture processing units, or the sony spc700 6502 derivative sound chip with dsps. But to say the overall design itself was not custom is a bit odd. Even the GBA's a

  • The cloud is a trap (Score:4)

    by MpVpRb ( 1423381 ) on Wednesday October 04, 2023 @12:04PM (#63899781)

    Run Away!

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

      Why? The cloud service has outlived the use of the hardware for virtually everyone. There's only a select few people who are affected by this. For the rest of us we're playing a Switch or whatever today's great hotness is.

      How many games in 2023 came out on the Wii U? I'll give you 3 guesses but you'll only need 1.

  • MK7 Online is a lot of fun. If you haven't experienced it yet, you still have time before the shutdown.

  • A shame for a few games (Score:3)

    by robosmurf ( 33876 ) on Wednesday October 04, 2023 @02:47PM (#63900205)

    In particular Xenoblade Chronicles X. This is only available on the Wii U (it's not had a remaster like other Xenoblade Chronicles games), and also there are quite a lot of high end items which are only available in online plan (which at the time a lot of people thought was a bit of a design flaw).
     

    • I am hoping for a remake, since I never did get far enough to really try the online modes, beyond I think an initial tutorial.

    • and also there are quite a lot of high end items which are only available in online plan

      There was a game for the Dreamcast called Skies of Arcadia (later ported to the Gamecube). In it, you had a certain weapon which was mostly pretty bad but it got stronger over the course of the game whenever you fed it these little glowey things. It remained sub-par until you fed it the thirtieth little glowey thing near the end of the game, at which point it became the ultimate super weapon.

      Thing is, the game only had twenty nine glowey things in it. In order to get the last one you needed to visit thei

    • Not to mention Splatoon, which is only interesting for the online multiplayer, will be lost forever as well.
      • Well, once they finish reverse engineering the server protocols, The Pretendo Network [pretendo.network] should suffice for Splatoon. (And everything else.) It's the WiiU / 3DS equivalent for Wiimmfi and the dwc_server_emulator / AltWFC projects.

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