Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection Ends Tuesday for Wii, DS

Pokemon is one of the biggest reasons that they are shutting the service down. People cheating like mad using the Pokgen programs.

@def: Oh, awesome. Thanks for the heads up, duder.

This had nothing to do with that. Wii Shop and the DSiShop are 100% unaffected by this thing.

Shit. I should really get around to transfering my Wii to my WiiU

Fortunately online play is not necessary for Tetris DS to still be awesome.

I was surprised they didn't brand it Wii-Fi.

The wifi hosts are still out there, so I'm sure someone will figure out how to trick an online webhost/server to appear as a Nintendo WFC connection. Hell Nintendo could sell a server software package to host WFC, and I'm sure some people would pay for that, especially if they could charge users a nominal fee (0.99 mthly).

Watching online services for the Wii slowly die off is a sad reminder of the passage of time. I've had mine since launch day, shit.

@crippl3:

Actually the sole reason I barely played any Mario Kart DS online.

@iamjohn: you are talking about other companies fixing the problem but as far as I can tell it's not the content holders that are fixing the problems but modders and the like, and some of the PC stuff switched to Gameranger I think but these are all things you can really only do with a PC I doubt it would be that easy to do on a console nor would it be cheap just so a handful of people can still play some old games online.

Edit : and as a reminder of the new consoles Nintendo is the only one that does not have yearly fee.

@tariqari: The people who "swamped" the stores for the original wii did not do so for the intent of online play they did it for local multiplayer and Nintendo's 1st party games. and how exactly are they "responsible for the gamespy debacle"

And yet other companies have done the legwork to remove those Gamespy checks or reconfigured their online services to not hobble the full functionality of the product, so what's Nintendo's excuse? Laziness? Cheapness? They literally can't? Frankly it doesn't matter to me because at the end of the day, they should have accounted for this and they didn't bother to and now a feature of the game simply doesn't work. And as someone who cares about game preservation who gets infuriated every single time a mostly peer-to-peer based online game gets its service cut for no good reason other than "lol fuck running the authentication servers," that's a problem to me.

And though it's kind of irrelevant to the topic at hand, @tariqari's not wrong that Gamespy was getting to be a joke around the time Nintendo was creating NWC in the first place so it's their own fault for hitching themselves to that wagon in such a way that they can't do anything to fix it, if that's the case (and I'm not convinced that it is).

@illuminosopher: There were also video games that lost some functionality. I cannot verify them off the top of my head unfortunately. And yes, I do expect them to have a couple of years or more functionality considering the widespread success of the Wii. I mean people were swamping the stores to get their hands on the Wii. The reach of the Wii had spread far and wide and the fact that it's basically no longer supported is an absolute mockery of the system in the end. That's great if they are still supporting even older systems, but my point is the Wii isn't even that old for it to be treated as an older system they no longer care about. They are responsible in this particular scenario for the gamespy debacle, just like EA and the other companies that bought into that as a sustainable engine for their online games. People have been hating on gamespy for a decade so Nintendo doesn't have much of a leg to stand on to play innocent for not realizing this. In fact, it's hard to believe Borderlands implemented gamespy. I mean seriously? Then again, we are talking about 2K. EA behind their games with GameSpy back in the day and now Nintendo. This was indeed a poor business decision and it clearly shows the lack of competency when it comes to Nintendo and their audience.

Nintendo's online is gone because GAMESPY is gone. And I love the mentality of oh it sucked when Microsoft and Sony did but Oh how dare Nintendo do it "they" should have known better.

I'm sorry, but when has "everyone else is doing it" ever been an acceptable excuse? It's a shitty situation, and it was a shitty situation when Microsoft and Sony did the exact same thing. Nintendo should have been more savvy and accounted for it, end stop, because there is no reason whatsoever that the online should not work anymore.

@tariqari: When you say some of their components are you referring to these that you mentioned "news, weather, mii channels, the thing with the trivia" do you really think it's worth maintaining those services

I mean if we want to go down this road can you still play all your online services on the original Xbox and Ps2 oh and do you really thing Microsoft and Sony will keep their PS3 and 360 stuff online give it 5 years and i bet you they drop that shit so freaking fast. I mean you already cant play your old games on the Xbox one or PS4 heck you really couldn't play a lot of the Original Xbox games on the 360 and the PS3 dropped backwards compatibility with the PS2 pretty fast.

I am a big Nintendo fan, but incompetency should be called incompetency regardless of fanboy-ism. Also, some of the online components removed had nothing to do with GameSpy going offline and have been disabled for over a year. If Nintendo is removing these features due to lack of resources, then it only furthers my point that Nintendo is not thriving like they once were, not even so long ago. I don't know that I'd go as far as saying they're struggling, but I definitely think they are coming up to a decision point this year where they could take their company to the next step or ultimately sew their fate.

Yep it's Nintendo's fault that the company that handled the online component of their games is gone and yep a company should totally spend their resources on keeping old online games online makes totally sense /sarcasm, also in terms of supporting hardware no one beats Nintendo I mean you can still send in your gamecube for repairs and i think during the gamecube era you could still send your snes and 64 in for repairs.

Nintendo has 0 blame here, live with it.

i had fun playing rainbow road in mario kart wii online with my friend, and tetris ds had some of the most intense 1 on 1 matches ever.

i just regret that my DS could never connect to my wi-fi connection after a while which meant i missed out on all of the extra Picross 3D download levels

No the blame goes to Nintendo. There are plentiful examples of how Nintendo has failed to keep up its hardware and software over the years, continuing to make the virtual boy mistakes its always made. Just a year or two ago, online service was cutoff on the Wii for its official virtual-ware such as the news, weather, mii channels, the thing with the trivia, even its own messaging system that allowed games to access the notification system.

The Wii U has by Nintendo's own admittance been a colossal failure that up till now is still lacking major flagship games from the Mario, Metroid, and Zelda franchises. The heads of Nintendo today seem to think that Video Games are about gimmicks, fads, and accessories with little emphasis on actual game quality. This year is likely to see the end of Ubisoft's support for Wii U for its flagship games, a short lived history I think only dating back to AC3 and Blacklist. Other companies may follow.

Nintendo is absolutely to blame and is ultimately responsible for its failure to keep up with the times. This is nothing new, but it has worsened over the years, leading many to believe that Nintendo may go the way of Sega or worse. Why else would Nintendo be trying to reach other markets such as healthcare of all things? When you're desperate, you consider all options.

The blame goes to Gamespy actually.

It looks like the list is Nintendo published games only, there are several online DS and Wii games missing from the list.

*sigh* again this was gamespy not Nintendo.

Excitebots, damn.

Wait a minute, all the fun I had with that game was playing local multi-player. This announcement doesn't affect that at all. I just wasted a bunch of virtual malt liquor.

Nintendon't what Nintendid.

How much could the DS online stuff cost per year?

Just goes to show, multiplay on consoles is a temporary rental, not a permanent purchase. There is a limited lifetime to it.

RIP Pokémon Battle Revolution. It was my favourite game for the Wii despite it's critics. Really gonna miss that.

@devil240z: man, the DS was released 9 years ago, you could have completed two bachelor's degrees in that time :P

There were DSes in college? you're so young!!!

I cant help but notice that Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time isn't on this list. Does that mean you'll continue to be able to play that online because online FF:CC was without a doubt one of the best experiences I had on my DS.

I remember going out and buying Mario Kart Wii from Hollywood Video of all places, all so I could go online and play with some buddies I only knew through the internet. Spent months playing that and Brawl and it was great.

Then we stopped being friends over a girl pushing me out because I was also a girl but not THE GIRL.

Then I bought Monster Hunter Tri and played with much cooler people instead and blew an easy 3-400 hours on that. I was honestly more sad then than I am now when Tri went offline solely because it fit the online archetype much better than Nintendo's stuff ever did.

Nah that's kind of a lie. I'll miss playing Excitebots. That game was GREAT.

Nintendo only needs $10 to get back in the black, baby, get us out of this hole we're in. What's this? Mario Kart Wii's costing us $10/month and is preventing us from upgrading any of our servers somehow? Good times are here again!

@roomrunner: same here. with my bro across the country,

Just played some Mario Kart Wii for the last time.

I'll see that game in hell.

hehe, I actually dug out a few DS games to go for one last shot with them, see if it just crashes at last minute.

Does it make me a monster for being far too lazy to make a WEP wifi network just to download the additional Picross 3D puzzles?

I thought this happened months ago?? Anyway I'm sure they need to cut costs.

But I just bought my copy of Fortune Street yesterday!

Ah shit. I'm going to hop on to Mario Kart DS for a few more rounds. Time to snake.

Probably my favorite Nintendo WFC memory was playing in the online Brawl and encountering a pink Captain Falcon who jumped around the map spamming the "show me your moves!" taunt rather than engaging in combat. I would find out later that this person was most likely one of my friends.

I think there might have been some connection, but that could just be my mind failing me. Would make a lot of sense though.

This would be amazing. I hope someone does this.

It's a real shame to see the servers shut down quite so abruptly. While it is usually a bit depressing to see a beloved MMO reach the end of its lifespan, an entire online service shutting down is far, far worse and not only because it's on a larger scale.

For a start, it means that some content will simply be forever gone on many copies of various games which still exist, either because said downloadable content required reaching a certain part in the game or just because it wasn't added until later in the game's lifespan after most players had already finished the available content. The other issue is that some of these games still have at least decently active populations, so this will affect a larger amount of players than the shutdown of a single game on its deathbed normally would.

However, the biggest issue here is the lack of any chance for any sort of revival. If a single game shuts down, there is still the chance of another publisher picking it up down the line or even of players simply creating some sort of private server (sometimes even with the blessing of the original developers/publishers). Unfortunately, revivals of entire online services are virtually unheard of so this death is much more 'final' than most.

I really want to see about pooling people together for like, a livestream or something to do a send off of Nintendo WFC on the Wii. I'm assuming the Giant Bomb staff don't want to deal with the Wii's online play (and lets face it, who does?) But I'd like to play Mario Kart Wii, Excite Bots or something online before they're taken away.