As someone who never owned a Wii U and never played my 3DS online it's hard for me to feel too affected. Are there still people playing 3DS online? Wii U, probably, especially because they just restored some online functionality, but even then most Wii U online games have Switch equivalents. Still, considering that both PS3 and 360 online functionality still work and 360 online functionality is likely to stay around indefinitely because of backwards compatibility, this is pretty early. It's Nintendo, and they clearly want to forget the Wii U era ever happened, but it's still early.

The real question is when does this kind of thing come for the Switch and will it effect cloud games? Switch has more online only games than Wii U (I'm sure there were some but I can't think of them) so a lot of games will be permanently lost as Nintendo continues to shut things down. The Wii U had over 11 years online and the 3DS even longer so it's hard to see this as too outlandish, but it is yet another blow to game preservation, this time not only keeping people from buying games but from playing them at all.

@bigsocrates: I would be very surprised if the Super Switch doesn't have backwards compatibility. I think it's going to become like other systems where games go offline on an individual basis and not one mass heap.

@ginormous76: First of all this is Nintendo! I badly want the Super Switch to have backwards compatibility but I could see them not doing it for a variety of reasons such as wanting to go with a new cartridge format. To be fair they did go with a new format for DS and had a GBA slot (at least at first) and have done more backwards compatibility than any other console maker (Wii, Wii U, DS, 3DS) so chances are probably over 50% at least.

BUT!

It's still Nintendo so there's still a good chance that even with backwards compatibility there's a whole new online infrastructure and eshop. Look at Wii to Wii U for an example. Backwards compatibilty, yes, any kind of platform integration at the level of Xbox or, to a lesser degree PlayStation? Nope.

I'm not saying it's impossible or won't happen or anything, I'm just saying that it's far from guaranteed.

Oh well... I hope every Wii U and 3DS owners will have good times for their final game matches hours prior to its servers shut down.

I remember getting kinda sad about it when this happened to the Wii. Never bought a WiiU or 3DS, but I empathize with those who did.

Future is a bit uncertain, however I do think the next Nintendo console will keep the same online infrastructure as the Switch. Nintendo is a wildcard, but they tend to consistently be about a generation behind the other two. That would make this be the one were things carry forward. We'll see.

@judaspete: The "generation behind" thing is subject to variability.

Again, I'm not saying they WON'T do a smooth transition, but Switch online features are incredibly rudimentary even compared to something like Xbox 360. They don't even have system level voice chat support and instead have a weird work around that requires a second device. It's pathetic for a system that launched in 2017.

Nintendo has just never been particularly competent at the online stuff and I see the trying to build an integrated online with cross-generation support as a very heavy ask for a company that, again, has online services that can't match up to a platform that is nearly 20 years old.

Maybe they've hired some really good network engineers and are going to launch with a modern integrated online platform but even if you want to go "generation behind" then Ps4/Xbox One did not have integrated online with PS3/Xbox 360.

If this doesn't make clear the Switch 2 won't have backwards compatibility, nothing will until they officially announce it. This is why I didn't bother picking up Tears of the Kingdom, because they are going to release a better version of it for the Switch 2 and it will also cost 70 dollars. And no, owning an original Switch version won't get you a discount.

I don't have either of these systems so it doesn't affect me. But I buy 90%+ of my games digitally, so it would really suck if they shut down the Switch online service and I lost/broke my Switch and could not get any of my library back. Console publishers really need to adopt the Steam model - I still have all my Steam purchases from ~2004 and I don't have any worries about them. With Nintendo, though - who knows. Could go *poof* at any moment.

@wollywoo: This actually does not affect the ability to download online purchases. Nintendo was clear that they will still support redownloading and to my knowledge they actually still support that even for the Wii (last time I checked that was the case.)

Xbox was very clear that when closing the Xbox 360 store they will leave up both online services and redownload services.

To my understanding it is much easier and cheaper to just leave up a few servers full of software to be downloaded (which is probably very rare at this point in the systems' lifecycle so you likely don't need a lot of bandwidth.)

I bought a Wii U (yeah, that was me...), and over several years spent far too much money on eShop purchases. It's not clear from this statement whether my downloads won't work anymore, but I expect that will happen eventually.

Nobody needs to feel too sad, though - USB Helper and WiiUDownloader offer ways to protect your purchases in perpetuity (and/or stick it to Nintendo for bailing on the Wii U after less than four-and-a-half years...).

@dh2005: It's pretty clear from the statement that your downloads will continue to work (at least for now.)

Will it still be possible to download update data or purchased software?

For the foreseeable future, it will still be possible to download update data and redownload purchased software and downloadable content from Nintendo eShop.

@bigsocrates: Oh, alright then. That allays my fears. Still, it sure would be nice to be able to download them on to the next system instead of having to dig out my old one out of the garage (or buy a brand new one if it breaks.)