It's the end of an era, as both the Nintendo Wii U and 3DS will be moving on to that great end-of-life cloud in the sky. Nintendo has put out a warning that they'll be winding down support both the eShop on both platforms. Starting May 23 of this year, credit cards will no longer be able to be used to add funds to the 3DS or Wii U eShop, with support for physical eShop cards going away on August 29th. Digital download codes will still work and will be redeemable until the final plug is pulled in March 2023.

As of late March 2023, it will no longer be possible to make purchases in Nintendo eShop for the Wii U system and the Nintendo 3DS family of systems. It will also no longer be possible to download free content, including game demos. Furthermore, as this date draws closer, related services will cease to function:

• As of May 23, 2022, it will no longer be possible to use a credit card to add funds to an account in Nintendo eShop on Wii U or the Nintendo 3DS family of systems.
• As of August 29, 2022, it will no longer be possible to use a Nintendo eShop Card to add funds to an account in Nintendo eShop on Wii U or the Nintendo 3DS family of systems. However, it will still be possible to redeem download codes until late March 2023.

Users who link their Nintendo Network ID wallet (used with Wii U and the Nintendo 3DS family of systems) with their Nintendo Account wallet (used with the Nintendo Switch family of systems) can use the shared balance to purchase content on any of these systems until late March 2023. After that, the balance can only be used to purchase content for the Nintendo Switch family of systems.

In an FAQ released alongside the announcement, Nintendo clarified that this will not affect online play, and users will still be able to redownload games they have previously purchased.

If someone visits Nintendo eShop and wants to download something on Wii U or the Nintendo 3DS family systems after late March 2023, what will they able to do?

• On both platforms, users will still be able to:
  • Redownload content they own.
  • Download existing software updates.
• On both platforms, users will not be able to:
  • Purchase any content:
    • On Nintendo 3DS, this includes paid content, plays and passes in software such as StreetPass Mii Plaza, Theme Shop, Nintendo Badge Arcade and Pokémon Bank.
    • On Wii U, this includes passes in software such as Wii Sports Club.
  • Download demos.
  • Download free-to-start software.
  • Redeem a download code.
  • Add funds to their Nintendo eShop balance.
• On Nintendo 3DS family systems, users will still be able to:
  • Download a small number of free themes from Theme Shop.

Nintendo released the 3DS in March 2011, with multiple revisions to the handheld released throughout its lifetime. The Wii U came out in November 2012, and had a short life, being officially discontinued after the launch of the more successful Switch in 2017. The Virtual Console service was well known on either system, where classic games were sold individually, ranging from decades of Nintendo history. Nintendo chose to mention that they currently have no plans to continue the Virtual Console line, and will be focusing support on the Nintendo Switch Online classic library.

Source

 

[SDA]

Well, goodbye to both the 3DS and Wii U. I don't even think the 3DS will get a successor, since we have the Switch lite.

 

[DJPlace]

was not expecting this so soon. i hope online play stay's to at least 2024 or something like that...

 

[Kopimist]

Since existing purchases are still going to be downloadable things like Nusspli and USB Helper should still work for a while but eventually Nintendo will eventually shut t hat off too I'm sure.

For this time in between they're going to leave no option to legitimately purchase A LOT of titles that are digital only (indie etc) which leaves people no choice but to pirate them through one of the aforementioned apps. I also expect a lot of rom sites to start listing WiiU dumps as well as torrent sites for the sake of preservation. Smart move Nintendo, its lalmost like they want to encourage piracy lol

 

[MadMakuFuuma]

question: at this point in time, the games are well preserved through torrents collections etc, right? so no worries.

 

[Kopimist]

From what i've seen theres not a whole lot of WiiU titles on torrent sites except for in the old Loadiine format which needs to be converted. I believe the reason for this is most people use either USB Helper or NUSspli to grab games.

 

[Alexander1970]

Good Morning.

Thanks to our great Developers we now have some
CFW Solutions for both Consoles without the EShop Games.

Sad,but it is Nintendo Decision...again....
I am still missing the DSi Shop....honestly only the great Shop Theme Music.



Thank you for that awesome Tune.

 

[The Catboy]

You know what’s worse about this? The fact that unlike Sony, Nintendo can’t be convinced to ever change their mind. Nintendo literally doesn’t care what their actions cause, they will never change their mind on any decision they’ve made.

 

[kerma]

News like this makes it so easy to pirate Nintendo's stuff without any kind of guilty conscience.

 

[Marc_LFD]

Well, goodbye to both the 3DS and Wii U. I don't even think the 3DS will get a successor, since we have the Switch lite.

What exactly did you expect or want a 3DS successor to be/have?

The Switch is a handheld and a home console, but in terms of portability size it's a bit bigger than it should (even the Lite version).

Credit: Online Tech

Seems like these days "Bigger is better!" totally throwing away being compact and portable. 3DS and Vita were.

I'm not even going to show an image of the Steam Deck, it's a monstrosity.

 

[Alexander1970]

First Nintendo opens EShop:

Then Nintendo closing EShop:

 

[Milonjorge]

What will happen with nusspli?

 

[MasterJ360]

People whine too much.

Current platforms get current support and when the hardware went EOL due to being superseded by Switch they still give you another 3 years of eShop access and people still moan.

That and they give absolutely immense amounts of notice for those latecomers who were always super interested in a 3DS yet somehow never managed to pick one up in the past 11 years to finally get onboard.

See how ridiculous your complaints are? Or are you still upset that you can't send Aeromail via the 430 Auto Gryo to the Prussian Consulate in Siam any more?

I know this is a bait comment, but nobody here is complaining over a dying console. This always happens to old gens, we just haven't had a successful console pulling the plug since the Wii. So the emotions are relatable, hell I joined this site to primarily hack both the WiiU/3DS/Vita alot of homebrew supports were active those years as well.

 

[SexiestManAlive]

People whine too much.

Current platforms get current support and when the hardware went EOL due to being superseded by Switch they still give you another 3 years of eShop access and people still moan.

That and they give absolutely immense amounts of notice for those latecomers who were always super interested in a 3DS yet somehow never managed to pick one up in the past 11 years to finally get onboard.

See how ridiculous your complaints are? Or are you still upset that you can't send Aeromail via the 430 Auto Gryo to the Prussian Consulate in Siam any more?

not taking obvious bait. lol.

 

[Alexander1970]

What will happen with nusspli?

Very good Question,but this "Stuff" is stored on the Nintendo Update Servers.

 

[the_randomizer]

Nintendo makes great games, too bad their policy on preserving older games other than shoddy services and emulators is bottom tier. I feel even less guilty about pirating their ROMs. Oh wait, I never did.

 

[Erebos]

View attachment 298317
ive had my current new 2ds for almost 2 years now
(i had a 3ds xl but that was lost and i dont have the nnid anymore)

Same here, it only shows one hour of total game time. Maybe the custom firmware is messing with it in some way?

 

[Dr_Faustus]

Vita would've sold better if Sony didn't use those shitty proprietary memory cards

Anyone who ever owned a Sony device in the last 40+ years will tell you they always go out of their way to push their own agenda of selling their own proprietary formats in a bid to make them a new standard in a market that does not need them. This was the case going all the way back to when Betamax was a thing and was in fact a Sony developed format which lost in the race against VHS.

Hell I think one of their only few wins in their never-ending format war was the standardization of Blu-Ray. Why else was it a standard feature of the PS3 when players were still insanely expensive? Because it was a format Sony developed and it was worth the losses in Console sales if it meant they could push the format into more hands and make it an accepted and well adopted standard.

Even their Memory Sticks had a reasonable existence in the market back when they came out in the late 90's. There was not an accepted standard of flash card type storage yet and Sony was pushing for that technology to be the standard until SD cards became the mainline accepted standard in the industry. That said this standard did not become fully accepted by most until around the mid 00's as there were still companies trying to compete with their own versions of cards. (Anyone remember XD cards?) That said Sony pushing their own format still that long into the point when SD became the standard is a fault on their own. I think they even have converters out there now that allow you to put in a microSD into a Stick lol.

Why do people keep forgetting SXOS was free >_>;; you only needed the license for the .xci loader... you could make cart images (archival) and run homebrew all day long for free

Because people rather whine about how someone producing a means to manipulate existing hardware/software was also making money from it. Meanwhile the pool of people who actually go out of their way to make these tools and do preservation is far smaller than those who would rather live in ignorance of the difficulties involved in this and how that pool is only going to shrink in time especially if Nintendo is going to start axing anyone's head off regardless of their intent or profitability of their intent. TL;DR People are spoiled.

Nintendo makes great games, too bad their policy on preserving older games other than shoddy services and emulators is bottom tier. I feel even less guilty about pirating their ROMs. Oh wait, I never did.

Nintendo is a company that has always prided themselves to profit first and to continue its existence at a close second regardless of nature. Before they had their core profit and focus in Video games they were in just about any other market trying to find the best means to profit and sustain themselves in the Japanese industry. They are basically the Japanese equivalent of IBM in that they made whatever they could that could be profitable until they found the one thing that was profitable enough that it defined that company from that point forward. They really do not care about the good they can do in this industry because at the end of the day, its an industry they basically own and have enough power in to do whatever they want in it. This was the case going way back since their early days and what basically helped create their rivals.

 

[ShadowOne333]

Time to sail the seven seas on everything 3DS and WiiU, mateys!
Arrrrgggghhhhh!!!

 

[Antogamer]

F

 

[Valwinz]

This is the Digital future some people wanted