10 ms·

Nintendo’s Wii U and 3DS online services will shut down in April

138 points by c_ris 3y ago

c_ris 3y ago
On the positive side: Players will be able to download patches and redownload games purchased from the eShop for the foreseeable future.
buildbuildbuild 3y ago
This an evidence of gaping holes in digital consumer rights. People bought eShop software and physical hardware that they can no longer use or update. Regulators should force companies to open source any games and associated server software that consumers paid to "own", yet companies are no longer willing to maintain.
- notamy 3y ago
  The 3DS launched in early 2011 and the Wii U launched in late 2012. I don’t know that it’s unreasonable to discontinue supporting them after a decade.
  - goosedragons 3y ago
    The 3DS wasn't discontinued until 2020 and the Wii U 2017. Games were still released for a few years after too. There are older Switches than some 3DSs.
    - bakugo 3y ago
      > The 3DS wasn't discontinued until 2020 Damn, I didn't realize it happened so recently. So it only took 2.5 years after discontinuation for eshop to be taken down, and 3 years for the remaining online services (other than redownloads of owned games) to be shut down. At the rate Nintendo is going, I wouldn't be surprised if Switch online services are shut down less than a year after they stop manufacturing it.
  - Pxtl 3y ago
    The Atari 2600 launched in 1977. If you can get your hands on a working console and cartridge, they will still play regardless of the status of Atari's company software infrastructure. You can even transfer ownership of the cartridge to other people at no cost. The license even permits resale! Cloud-based software allows corporations to rewrite ownership rights however they see fit. edit: Aside, marking the lifespan of a product from launch is wrong. It should be marked from the date of distribution of the last product from the manufacturer, because that's the last time somebody was able to buy a "new" one, and a buyer has a reasonable expectation of long-term-support for buying a new piece of hardware. For example, I can buy a 2022 Moto G Stylus from the Motorola website today. They promise 3 years of security updates... but that phone was released a year and a half ago, so they're actually promising 1.5 years of security patches.
    - mynameisvlad 3y ago
      Do you think a person’s cartridge of Pokemon Sun is going to stop working after this? Online services means multiplayer games won’t work anymore, but single player physical games won’t magically stop working just because the online services shut down.
      - bentley 3y ago
        > Do you think a person’s cartridge of Pokemon Sun is going to stop working after this? Actually… I have a legitimate question here. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was broken on launch for the Wii U, and required a day one patch to play. It’s been stated that people who bought a game from the eShop will retain their ability to download it. But has it been clarified whether people who buy cartridges or discs secondhand will still have access to patches? (The fine article implies yes. So the obvious next question is, when will those capabilities be shut down?)
        goosedragons 3y ago
        Yes, there is still access to patches. They haven't announced when that might shutdown yet.
  - hoherd 3y ago
    I think you're missing the point of the parent's suggestion. > Regulators should force companies to open source any games and associated server software that consumers paid to "own", yet companies are no longer willing to maintain. Nintendo shouldn't be forced to support them, but consumers should be able to continue using them. The hardware still works great, and even if not, we have virtual hardware. This should be no different from me being able to pick up a game of Clue that my parents bought in the 60's and play it. These 3DS and Wii-U games were purchased by millions of people, and they are part of our global culture. People should not have to worry that they are legally prohibited from finding ways to play them.
    - paul_funyun 3y ago
      They didn't buy the games, they just bought licenses to use them in certain ways. Their mistake
      - DoctorDabadedoo 3y ago
        Wonder why digital games usually go the same price of physical media, then if their ownership is conceptually different.
        bogantech 3y ago
        Because enough people don't mind being gouged
        slothtrop 3y ago
        They're no longer conceptually different in the case of discs (though maybe for the cartridges Nintendo still uses). Inserting a disc into a ps4 for the first time often just triggers a download for all of the game data, rather than copying from disc. Add to the fact new releases are heavily patched these days which requires download. At least in the ps3 era launch titles were a fairly complete product. Once Sony phases out support for the ps4, the console is rendered useless for playing anything that isn't already installed. Hence my copy of Bloodborne is staying on there. I know they'll probably release some "remaster" but I'm not keen on re-purchasing what I already own (there are gamers that do this... buying a game multiple times, even in the same console generation, it's crazy).
  - GuB-42 3y ago
    Nintendo is happy to make money off the NES intellectual property, defending it more aggressively than anyone else in the industry. They will do the same for the 3DS and WiiU. That they are releasing emulator-based ports shows that the platform is still alive, and yet, they stop supporting the actual hardware. It is totally within their rights to discontinue support, and it is not even unreasonable, but unlike some companies that offer some nice "parting gifts" when they do that (ex: open source, DRM free version, or just free credit), you will get nothing but lawsuits from Nintendo. At least, you will still be able to play the game you bought, there are more evil companies out there.
  - adra 3y ago
    Yeah, I mean I "bought" my Godfather DVDs two decades ago, so it's totally fine that I lose the ability to watch it now, of course. This sort of well-we-have-planned-obsolescence-built-into-our-product should be a hard red line that's worth fighting now, because pretty much any game released today from AAA studios have at the very least lip service online functionality. If we continue down this path, it'll be like the dark ages of tv where entire libraries of important cultural works were lost due to neglegent preservation (see BBC tape reuse). It's likely that when this comes to a head, there will be countless titles gone forever and nobody with the skill/licensing to repair the loss of culturally relevant material. If EA decides dragon age is no longer worth their servers kicking, will I lose my BioWare collection? Probably.
- goosedragons 3y ago
  Games can still be updated/redownloaded at least for now. It's really just online servers for games going down and for /most/ Wii U/3DS games it's not a huge deal. That said you are right and it is frustrating that companies can pull this crap. There is at least some effort already by the community to recreate the Wii U/3DS servers with Pretendo. Sucks that everything has to be reverse engineered though!
- filoleg 3y ago
  > People bought eShop software and physical hardware that they can no longer use or update. Yeah, about that - ‘FAQ from Nintendo says that players will be able to download patches and redownload games purchased from the eShop “for the foreseeable future.”’ Directly from the link in the OP.
  - HideousKojima 3y ago
    If the original Wii and DSi are any indication, the store shutdowns should follow in just couple of years.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - filoleg 3y ago
      I will complain about it once I see it happen. Wii and DSi were released during the time when digital game stores were just emerging and were not nearly as commonly used as they are now, so, at the time, it felt like they were an afterthought. It was the first generation of consoles that even had digital stores in the first place (as Wii and DSi were a part of the same generation as Xbox360 and PS3, and GameCube/PS2/Xbox [from the prior generation] didn’t have digital stores). Almost 2 decades later, in the present, digital game stores are the primary method of purchasing games for tons of people, and their share only keeps growing. I think these days, it is a bit more difficult and damaging to just abruptly sunset them the same way it went with Wii and DSi. We will see how it goes, but I will save my outrage until Nintendo actually does or announces doing such a move. Otherwise, I would just be fighting the windmills created by my projections of what Nintendo might theoretically do in the future. Love your username btw.
- Pxtl 3y ago
  Honestly, I hate blockchains, but I feel like they're the ultimate solution for digital goods. I don't want to own NFTs for their own sake as "speculative assets" or "stores of value" or nonsense like that, but an NFT that is my certificate of ownership of a copy of like a videogame or a streamable movie, etc. would just make sense. Combine that with a requirement that (a) binaries be freely redistributable, and (b) binaries must authenticate against a blockchain and not against private servers. I mean that still doesn't solve the problem of games that require servers to operate for online play, but at lest that would return digital goods to near-parity with physical media in terms of copy-protection and transferability and ownership. If you go the extra mile and require that companies publish free dedicated-server-binaries for end-of-life products and allow clients to point to custom servers, you could still run the game while still protecting the seller from piracy. I mean, you'd have no security patches so if you're running eg your own Star Wars Galaxies server you'd want it to be invitational-only and secured with a VPN, since playing with strangers would get the server and clients hacked. That seems like it would be a reasonable compromise for video-game preservation - old games are therefore available indefinitely to anyone who purchased access to them (and this is transferable), but without companies having to abandon their copyright protections. I mean this approach would probably have to be mandated by a government or a near-monopoly e-store like Valve, so I'm sure it would get screwed up and fail, but a boy can dream.
  - blincoln 3y ago
    > a requirement that (a) binaries be freely redistributable, and (b) binaries must authenticate against a blockchain and not against private servers If the software runs on general-purpose hardware, it would be trivial to modify it to bypass the blockchain authentication step. If the software is only compatible with some sort of locked-down platform that won't run modified code, then it already has an enforcement mechanism (whatever is used to prevent running modified code), and a blockchain is redundant.
    - Pxtl 3y ago
      Blockchain is not redundant because blockchain provides non-first-party ownership authorization and would enforce the transferability of the product. Like, right now, if I buy a digital good on a game console, my "ownership" of that good is controlled by the vendor. They can take it away on a whim, or simply because they no longer want to maintain the server that says "yes, Pxtl owns this". If that ownership is stored on a record outside of the first-party infrastructure and the software must authenticate my ownership against that 3rd-party, then that 3rd party is the one that controls whether or not I own the software, and is responsible for keeping that service live. And a blockchain, flawed as it is, is a decent solution for managing ownership of goods without having the infrastructure owned by a single entity who has to maintain it and can take it down on a whim. I mean, an ICANN-style neutral 3rd party with specific policies about lifetime and transferability of ownership that just runs this on a regular-ass SQL server would be fine too.
- VyseofArcadia 3y ago
  I wonder, if there were legal requirements to maintain services like this, would we see fewer of them? Suddenly, your service becomes, after a certain point, a liability.
- Zambyte 3y ago
  Not just open source, it should be in the public domain.
CM30 3y ago
Fortunately there is a fan run project that's working on recreating the online services for these consoles/games, in the same way that Wiimmfi has gotten the DS and Wii's multiplayer functionality up and running. See the Pretendo project here: https://pretendo.network/ https://pretendo.network/ It's not exactly feature perfect yet, but 2024 gives them time to fix up many of the features they haven't gotten working, and hopefully expand support to more games.
- raytopia 3y ago
  I know it's not realistic but it'd be cool if pretendo made a e-shop replacement.
  - linkpuff 3y ago
    It is technically possible, but it will only hold homebrew at best, due to licensing nightmares. They published a video recently of a PoC of it happening in their discord I think this could replace the likes of Universal Updater (3DS's main homebrew browser) if it gets to public. Not that UU is bad, it just lacks the tiny eshop dudes :)
    - RockRobotRock 3y ago
      You can just do illegal things and not give a shit.
      - spicybright 3y ago
        While for sure yes, and it could probably work for a while, Nintendo is notoriously trigger happy with shutting down fan projects. Fan games using their IP are the main targets, but emulation and rom distribution is on their radar too. Ex. Dophin emulator for gamecube/wii has to fight tooth and nail against nintendo to be able to stay up. Even with courts agreeing nintendo can't do anything, they still try every so often to take legal action against the project. Most recently trying to shutdown offering the emulator on the steam deck. I can't say for sure, but I imagine that has an effect on how many people are willing to develop around nintendo products.
haunter 3y ago
>It will still be possible to use online services for the following software but that may also end at some point in the future. >Pokémon Bank I have 0 hopes tbh, the writing is on the wall. Pokemon Bank is an awesome feature, basically allowing you to play through the whole franchise from Pokemons across all games...
- jandrese 3y ago
  Won't that make it blatantly obvious just how much each game is a copy of the previous one?
  - itronitron 3y ago
    Technically, no... because that's already obvious.
  - antifa 3y ago
    IDK how Pokémon is still so popular 20 years later, and with people I played Pokémon with in elementary school, too. I played Pokémon Red and one of the DS sequels and felt like I was just playing the exact same game again. When NFT "art" and generative art came out it, the spammy and uninspired nature of it reminded me of one specific thing: the hundreds of Pokémon released after the original 150.
derstander 3y ago
It’ll never happen, but I think codifying a concept similar to “abandonware” in law would be a huge step forward. If a person can’t buy or rent a piece of media, then it should be able to be freely shared. Maybe add a short time-out period in case there are momentary hiccups with a creator. Make it apply not just to videogames, but books, movies, music, etc. After all, if you can’t buy it, you’re not depriving the creator of revenue. Actually, looking back at what I wrote, I think maybe I’m just describing the Copyright system as it was originally envisioned before times were extended to such ridiculous lengths. Whoops.
- 12907835202 3y ago
  But the value of something is often its scarcity... The owner of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin by Wu Tang would be pretty mad if it was freely shared because it couldn't be bought or rented. Context from Wikipedia for those who don't know it: "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin is the seventh studio album by the American hip hop group Wu-Tang Clan. Only one physical copy of the album was created, with no ability to download or stream it digitally. Purchased directly from the Wu-Tang Clan in 2015, it became the most expensive work of music ever sold." You'd have to have special categories whereby quantities could be intentionally limited. But then Nintendo would presumably argue that they intended there to be a limited number of Wii's or Pokémon Red or whatever.
  - derstander 3y ago
    > You'd have to have special categories whereby quantities could be intentionally limited. This is artificial scarcity, especially when applied to things that can be distributed digitally. I don’t particularly see a reason to encourage it. It’s not like 1s and 0s are in short supply compared to, say, precious metals. And omitting that carve out will explicitly prevent Nintendo and other companies from making that argument.
  - makapuf 3y ago
    > The owner of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin by Wu Tang would be pretty mad if it was freely shared because it couldn't be bought or rented. Indeed. And? If you say that in that case it would never have been produced, well this does not change much for the N-1 current and future humans. In the other hand, yes sometimes you might want to limit diffusion somehow, it's your right and it might be complicated. Better to have full copyright, but for 20 years. (That would mean Wii games out of copyright in 3 years), LGTM.
_jplc 3y ago
Piracy is the only real alternative
raytopia 3y ago
This is sad. I really wish consoles were more open platforms than they are today so people didn't have to jailbreak their devices to run stuff like pretendo and install homebrew. Also imagine how cool a replacement E-Shop would be. Someone really needs to work on creating a open console or even one with a form factor similar to the 3DS/DS. I mean imagine how cool a analogue pocket DS would be or maybe even a fantasy console based on the DS. But regardless I really wish consoles weren't so locked down.
- jlarocco 3y ago
  Meh. People knew when they bought in that the platforms were closed. If they wanted "open platforms" they should've bought PC games.
  - _chu1 3y ago
    PC does not offer the same experiences Nintendo has. Animal Crossing New Leaf was only on 3DS and is one of my favorite games ever. It's depressing kids growing up after me won't be able to experience what I did as easily, I used to do local and online multiplayer all the time, I had almost every fruit in the game. Still play it now after getting another N3DSXL last Christmas after my old one was stolen.
  - scblock 3y ago
    PC games aren't particularly open. Most are heavily DRM encumbered.
    - bentley 3y ago
      Some PC games are heavily DRM encumbered. Most (on Steam) are lightly DRM encumbered. Many (everything on GOG and other such stores) are not DRM encumbered. This is a much better situation than on consoles, where all games are heavily DRM encumbered.
  - godman_8 3y ago
    Exactly! That's why I can still play Counter-Strike: Global Offensive...oh wait, nvm.
xchip 3y ago
I hope this help make the could thing vanish
cultureswitch 3y ago
I think having pure data IP protected by copyright should require said IP to be uploaded to a national database in each country. After the copyright elapses, everyone can simply download from that database. Sure, there are a lot of works to copyright every year. That's a lot of data. But we need to save all of that somewhere, so it might as well be some place that can't go bankrupt.
- hirako2000 3y ago
  That already got sorted and worked for books, at least in the UK. The British (National) Library held and still holds the duty to acquire in the form of legal deposit, at least one print of each book published in the UK. So every single book published gets stored in there, and has been since its inception 50 years ago. It gathers 170–200 millions unique items, and counting. With free access to anybody, able to physically access the library. It has a budget of less than £150 million. I bet implementing an archive of digital content would be a cheaper and despite more technologically challenging would remain do-able with a reasonable number of techies. Oh isn't it what the Internet Archive is, and even more? Is that not what they've attempted to fulfill for a while now and the primary reason they haven't accomplish it is due to a legal war with large IP distributors and their armies of top paid laywers shaping the interpretation of copyright legislations?
- wnoise 3y ago
  There are still a lot of non-digital works produced, though it is shrinking in proportion.
slowhadoken 3y ago
This is way more common with phones but they handle it better. The iPhone 4 came out the same year as the 3DS. Consoles have to prioritize cross compatibility to keep competing with the Steam Deck.
Willish42 3y ago
As sad as this news makes me for the preservation of eShop stuff, the modding community tends to rally around Nintendo products and I have pretty high faith that things will be preserved one way or another by the awesome work of modders and the emulation community. It's a sad state of affairs for copyright law, but generally by the time Nintendo shuts down "official" access to content for a console generation, rom files are readily available from a few google searches and a relatively well-thought-out and simple modding process for the hardware. There are many first party nintendo games and remakes that still haven't made it to newer consoles like the Switch yet. Hopefully Nintendo comes up with better backwards compatibility in the future for current Switch titles, but assuming they won't as they often don't, piracy and emulation tend to fill in the gaps pretty well in my experience.
pierat 3y ago
Piracy is ethical when purchasing doesnt equal owning. This is yet another case of falsely advertised "ownership", that is really a rental.
deergomoo 3y ago
This will not help a jot with online play, but it’s worth noting that it’s very very easy to softmod any model of 3DS: https://3ds.hacks.guide/ https://3ds.hacks.guide/ The 3DS has a fantastic library but a good chunk of it is very difficult to obtain these days—either because it was only available digitally, or because prices for used physical copies are unreasonable. It’s sad that Nintendo don’t give a shit about preservation past their ability to sell old games over and over, but if I can no longer give the creator money for a game I’m of the opinion that largely absolves any immorality of piracy.
INTPenis 3y ago
Aww the 3DS is still a very nice retro console where you can play anything from the Nintendo store. I'm assuming they mean the nintendo store for 3DS will shut down then? I gave mine to my nephew a while back, it's probably broken by now. But it's still sad. Sometimes I just feel like playing some classic games like Castlevania, Metroid and Earthbound.
- jcotton42 3y ago
  The 3DS and Wii U eShops have already shut down.
slothtrop 3y ago
The interest surrounding these issues suggests to me that PC gaming is going to win greater market share. Steam placed a big bet on this well before the Deck, but they were too early. The ability to upgrade, and still have easy access to your long-standing library, will be increasingly appealing to consumers, at least those who aren't merely casual. Either consoles will go from glorified locked-down PCs to actual PCs, or gaming PCs will just resemble consoles more through quality-of-life features.
pipeline_peak 3y ago
Every generation I wonder when it’s worth it to buy games digitally so I can transfer them over to the following console. So far I have yet to see Nintendo make any effort and it really should be a crime. These things are literal PC’s and tablets, there is no technical obstacle anymore.

138 points by c_ris 3y ago

On the positive side: Players will be able to download patches and redownload games purchased from the eShop for the foreseeable future.

buildbuildbuild 3y ago

This an evidence of gaping holes in digital consumer rights. People bought eShop software and physical hardware that they can no longer use or update. Regulators should force companies to open source any games and associated server software that consumers paid to "own", yet companies are no longer willing to maintain.

notamy 3y ago
The 3DS launched in early 2011 and the Wii U launched in late 2012. I don’t know that it’s unreasonable to discontinue supporting them after a decade.
- goosedragons 3y ago
  The 3DS wasn't discontinued until 2020 and the Wii U 2017. Games were still released for a few years after too. There are older Switches than some 3DSs.
  - bakugo 3y ago
    > The 3DS wasn't discontinued until 2020 Damn, I didn't realize it happened so recently. So it only took 2.5 years after discontinuation for eshop to be taken down, and 3 years for the remaining online services (other than redownloads of owned games) to be shut down. At the rate Nintendo is going, I wouldn't be surprised if Switch online services are shut down less than a year after they stop manufacturing it.
- Pxtl 3y ago
  The Atari 2600 launched in 1977. If you can get your hands on a working console and cartridge, they will still play regardless of the status of Atari's company software infrastructure. You can even transfer ownership of the cartridge to other people at no cost. The license even permits resale! Cloud-based software allows corporations to rewrite ownership rights however they see fit. edit: Aside, marking the lifespan of a product from launch is wrong. It should be marked from the date of distribution of the last product from the manufacturer, because that's the last time somebody was able to buy a "new" one, and a buyer has a reasonable expectation of long-term-support for buying a new piece of hardware. For example, I can buy a 2022 Moto G Stylus from the Motorola website today. They promise 3 years of security updates... but that phone was released a year and a half ago, so they're actually promising 1.5 years of security patches.
  - mynameisvlad 3y ago
    Do you think a person’s cartridge of Pokemon Sun is going to stop working after this? Online services means multiplayer games won’t work anymore, but single player physical games won’t magically stop working just because the online services shut down.
    - bentley 3y ago
      > Do you think a person’s cartridge of Pokemon Sun is going to stop working after this? Actually… I have a legitimate question here. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was broken on launch for the Wii U, and required a day one patch to play. It’s been stated that people who bought a game from the eShop will retain their ability to download it. But has it been clarified whether people who buy cartridges or discs secondhand will still have access to patches? (The fine article implies yes. So the obvious next question is, when will those capabilities be shut down?)
      - goosedragons 3y ago
        Yes, there is still access to patches. They haven't announced when that might shutdown yet.
- hoherd 3y ago
  I think you're missing the point of the parent's suggestion. > Regulators should force companies to open source any games and associated server software that consumers paid to "own", yet companies are no longer willing to maintain. Nintendo shouldn't be forced to support them, but consumers should be able to continue using them. The hardware still works great, and even if not, we have virtual hardware. This should be no different from me being able to pick up a game of Clue that my parents bought in the 60's and play it. These 3DS and Wii-U games were purchased by millions of people, and they are part of our global culture. People should not have to worry that they are legally prohibited from finding ways to play them.
  - paul_funyun 3y ago
    They didn't buy the games, they just bought licenses to use them in certain ways. Their mistake
    - DoctorDabadedoo 3y ago
      Wonder why digital games usually go the same price of physical media, then if their ownership is conceptually different.
      - bogantech 3y ago
        Because enough people don't mind being gouged
      - slothtrop 3y ago
        They're no longer conceptually different in the case of discs (though maybe for the cartridges Nintendo still uses). Inserting a disc into a ps4 for the first time often just triggers a download for all of the game data, rather than copying from disc. Add to the fact new releases are heavily patched these days which requires download. At least in the ps3 era launch titles were a fairly complete product. Once Sony phases out support for the ps4, the console is rendered useless for playing anything that isn't already installed. Hence my copy of Bloodborne is staying on there. I know they'll probably release some "remaster" but I'm not keen on re-purchasing what I already own (there are gamers that do this... buying a game multiple times, even in the same console generation, it's crazy).
- GuB-42 3y ago
  Nintendo is happy to make money off the NES intellectual property, defending it more aggressively than anyone else in the industry. They will do the same for the 3DS and WiiU. That they are releasing emulator-based ports shows that the platform is still alive, and yet, they stop supporting the actual hardware. It is totally within their rights to discontinue support, and it is not even unreasonable, but unlike some companies that offer some nice "parting gifts" when they do that (ex: open source, DRM free version, or just free credit), you will get nothing but lawsuits from Nintendo. At least, you will still be able to play the game you bought, there are more evil companies out there.
- adra 3y ago
  Yeah, I mean I "bought" my Godfather DVDs two decades ago, so it's totally fine that I lose the ability to watch it now, of course. This sort of well-we-have-planned-obsolescence-built-into-our-product should be a hard red line that's worth fighting now, because pretty much any game released today from AAA studios have at the very least lip service online functionality. If we continue down this path, it'll be like the dark ages of tv where entire libraries of important cultural works were lost due to neglegent preservation (see BBC tape reuse). It's likely that when this comes to a head, there will be countless titles gone forever and nobody with the skill/licensing to repair the loss of culturally relevant material. If EA decides dragon age is no longer worth their servers kicking, will I lose my BioWare collection? Probably.
goosedragons 3y ago
Games can still be updated/redownloaded at least for now. It's really just online servers for games going down and for /most/ Wii U/3DS games it's not a huge deal. That said you are right and it is frustrating that companies can pull this crap. There is at least some effort already by the community to recreate the Wii U/3DS servers with Pretendo. Sucks that everything has to be reverse engineered though!
filoleg 3y ago
> People bought eShop software and physical hardware that they can no longer use or update. Yeah, about that - ‘FAQ from Nintendo says that players will be able to download patches and redownload games purchased from the eShop “for the foreseeable future.”’ Directly from the link in the OP.
- HideousKojima 3y ago
  If the original Wii and DSi are any indication, the store shutdowns should follow in just couple of years.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - filoleg 3y ago
    I will complain about it once I see it happen. Wii and DSi were released during the time when digital game stores were just emerging and were not nearly as commonly used as they are now, so, at the time, it felt like they were an afterthought. It was the first generation of consoles that even had digital stores in the first place (as Wii and DSi were a part of the same generation as Xbox360 and PS3, and GameCube/PS2/Xbox [from the prior generation] didn’t have digital stores). Almost 2 decades later, in the present, digital game stores are the primary method of purchasing games for tons of people, and their share only keeps growing. I think these days, it is a bit more difficult and damaging to just abruptly sunset them the same way it went with Wii and DSi. We will see how it goes, but I will save my outrage until Nintendo actually does or announces doing such a move. Otherwise, I would just be fighting the windmills created by my projections of what Nintendo might theoretically do in the future. Love your username btw.
Pxtl 3y ago
Honestly, I hate blockchains, but I feel like they're the ultimate solution for digital goods. I don't want to own NFTs for their own sake as "speculative assets" or "stores of value" or nonsense like that, but an NFT that is my certificate of ownership of a copy of like a videogame or a streamable movie, etc. would just make sense. Combine that with a requirement that (a) binaries be freely redistributable, and (b) binaries must authenticate against a blockchain and not against private servers. I mean that still doesn't solve the problem of games that require servers to operate for online play, but at lest that would return digital goods to near-parity with physical media in terms of copy-protection and transferability and ownership. If you go the extra mile and require that companies publish free dedicated-server-binaries for end-of-life products and allow clients to point to custom servers, you could still run the game while still protecting the seller from piracy. I mean, you'd have no security patches so if you're running eg your own Star Wars Galaxies server you'd want it to be invitational-only and secured with a VPN, since playing with strangers would get the server and clients hacked. That seems like it would be a reasonable compromise for video-game preservation - old games are therefore available indefinitely to anyone who purchased access to them (and this is transferable), but without companies having to abandon their copyright protections. I mean this approach would probably have to be mandated by a government or a near-monopoly e-store like Valve, so I'm sure it would get screwed up and fail, but a boy can dream.
- blincoln 3y ago
  > a requirement that (a) binaries be freely redistributable, and (b) binaries must authenticate against a blockchain and not against private servers If the software runs on general-purpose hardware, it would be trivial to modify it to bypass the blockchain authentication step. If the software is only compatible with some sort of locked-down platform that won't run modified code, then it already has an enforcement mechanism (whatever is used to prevent running modified code), and a blockchain is redundant.
  - Pxtl 3y ago
    Blockchain is not redundant because blockchain provides non-first-party ownership authorization and would enforce the transferability of the product. Like, right now, if I buy a digital good on a game console, my "ownership" of that good is controlled by the vendor. They can take it away on a whim, or simply because they no longer want to maintain the server that says "yes, Pxtl owns this". If that ownership is stored on a record outside of the first-party infrastructure and the software must authenticate my ownership against that 3rd-party, then that 3rd party is the one that controls whether or not I own the software, and is responsible for keeping that service live. And a blockchain, flawed as it is, is a decent solution for managing ownership of goods without having the infrastructure owned by a single entity who has to maintain it and can take it down on a whim. I mean, an ICANN-style neutral 3rd party with specific policies about lifetime and transferability of ownership that just runs this on a regular-ass SQL server would be fine too.
VyseofArcadia 3y ago
I wonder, if there were legal requirements to maintain services like this, would we see fewer of them? Suddenly, your service becomes, after a certain point, a liability.
Zambyte 3y ago
Not just open source, it should be in the public domain.

CM30 3y ago

Fortunately there is a fan run project that's working on recreating the online services for these consoles/games, in the same way that Wiimmfi has gotten the DS and Wii's multiplayer functionality up and running. See the Pretendo project here: https://pretendo.network/ https://pretendo.network/ It's not exactly feature perfect yet, but 2024 gives them time to fix up many of the features they haven't gotten working, and hopefully expand support to more games.

raytopia 3y ago
I know it's not realistic but it'd be cool if pretendo made a e-shop replacement.
- linkpuff 3y ago
  It is technically possible, but it will only hold homebrew at best, due to licensing nightmares. They published a video recently of a PoC of it happening in their discord I think this could replace the likes of Universal Updater (3DS's main homebrew browser) if it gets to public. Not that UU is bad, it just lacks the tiny eshop dudes :)
  - RockRobotRock 3y ago
    You can just do illegal things and not give a shit.
    - spicybright 3y ago
      While for sure yes, and it could probably work for a while, Nintendo is notoriously trigger happy with shutting down fan projects. Fan games using their IP are the main targets, but emulation and rom distribution is on their radar too. Ex. Dophin emulator for gamecube/wii has to fight tooth and nail against nintendo to be able to stay up. Even with courts agreeing nintendo can't do anything, they still try every so often to take legal action against the project. Most recently trying to shutdown offering the emulator on the steam deck. I can't say for sure, but I imagine that has an effect on how many people are willing to develop around nintendo products.

haunter 3y ago

>It will still be possible to use online services for the following software but that may also end at some point in the future. >Pokémon Bank I have 0 hopes tbh, the writing is on the wall. Pokemon Bank is an awesome feature, basically allowing you to play through the whole franchise from Pokemons across all games...

jandrese 3y ago
Won't that make it blatantly obvious just how much each game is a copy of the previous one?
- itronitron 3y ago
  Technically, no... because that's already obvious.
- antifa 3y ago
  IDK how Pokémon is still so popular 20 years later, and with people I played Pokémon with in elementary school, too. I played Pokémon Red and one of the DS sequels and felt like I was just playing the exact same game again. When NFT "art" and generative art came out it, the spammy and uninspired nature of it reminded me of one specific thing: the hundreds of Pokémon released after the original 150.

derstander 3y ago

It’ll never happen, but I think codifying a concept similar to “abandonware” in law would be a huge step forward. If a person can’t buy or rent a piece of media, then it should be able to be freely shared. Maybe add a short time-out period in case there are momentary hiccups with a creator. Make it apply not just to videogames, but books, movies, music, etc. After all, if you can’t buy it, you’re not depriving the creator of revenue. Actually, looking back at what I wrote, I think maybe I’m just describing the Copyright system as it was originally envisioned before times were extended to such ridiculous lengths. Whoops.

12907835202 3y ago
But the value of something is often its scarcity... The owner of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin by Wu Tang would be pretty mad if it was freely shared because it couldn't be bought or rented. Context from Wikipedia for those who don't know it: "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin is the seventh studio album by the American hip hop group Wu-Tang Clan. Only one physical copy of the album was created, with no ability to download or stream it digitally. Purchased directly from the Wu-Tang Clan in 2015, it became the most expensive work of music ever sold." You'd have to have special categories whereby quantities could be intentionally limited. But then Nintendo would presumably argue that they intended there to be a limited number of Wii's or Pokémon Red or whatever.
- derstander 3y ago
  > You'd have to have special categories whereby quantities could be intentionally limited. This is artificial scarcity, especially when applied to things that can be distributed digitally. I don’t particularly see a reason to encourage it. It’s not like 1s and 0s are in short supply compared to, say, precious metals. And omitting that carve out will explicitly prevent Nintendo and other companies from making that argument.
- makapuf 3y ago
  > The owner of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin by Wu Tang would be pretty mad if it was freely shared because it couldn't be bought or rented. Indeed. And? If you say that in that case it would never have been produced, well this does not change much for the N-1 current and future humans. In the other hand, yes sometimes you might want to limit diffusion somehow, it's your right and it might be complicated. Better to have full copyright, but for 20 years. (That would mean Wii games out of copyright in 3 years), LGTM.

_jplc 3y ago

Piracy is the only real alternative

raytopia 3y ago

This is sad. I really wish consoles were more open platforms than they are today so people didn't have to jailbreak their devices to run stuff like pretendo and install homebrew. Also imagine how cool a replacement E-Shop would be. Someone really needs to work on creating a open console or even one with a form factor similar to the 3DS/DS. I mean imagine how cool a analogue pocket DS would be or maybe even a fantasy console based on the DS. But regardless I really wish consoles weren't so locked down.

jlarocco 3y ago
Meh. People knew when they bought in that the platforms were closed. If they wanted "open platforms" they should've bought PC games.
- _chu1 3y ago
  PC does not offer the same experiences Nintendo has. Animal Crossing New Leaf was only on 3DS and is one of my favorite games ever. It's depressing kids growing up after me won't be able to experience what I did as easily, I used to do local and online multiplayer all the time, I had almost every fruit in the game. Still play it now after getting another N3DSXL last Christmas after my old one was stolen.
- scblock 3y ago
  PC games aren't particularly open. Most are heavily DRM encumbered.
  - bentley 3y ago
    Some PC games are heavily DRM encumbered. Most (on Steam) are lightly DRM encumbered. Many (everything on GOG and other such stores) are not DRM encumbered. This is a much better situation than on consoles, where all games are heavily DRM encumbered.
- godman_8 3y ago
  Exactly! That's why I can still play Counter-Strike: Global Offensive...oh wait, nvm.

xchip 3y ago

I hope this help make the could thing vanish

cultureswitch 3y ago

I think having pure data IP protected by copyright should require said IP to be uploaded to a national database in each country. After the copyright elapses, everyone can simply download from that database. Sure, there are a lot of works to copyright every year. That's a lot of data. But we need to save all of that somewhere, so it might as well be some place that can't go bankrupt.

hirako2000 3y ago
That already got sorted and worked for books, at least in the UK. The British (National) Library held and still holds the duty to acquire in the form of legal deposit, at least one print of each book published in the UK. So every single book published gets stored in there, and has been since its inception 50 years ago. It gathers 170–200 millions unique items, and counting. With free access to anybody, able to physically access the library. It has a budget of less than £150 million. I bet implementing an archive of digital content would be a cheaper and despite more technologically challenging would remain do-able with a reasonable number of techies. Oh isn't it what the Internet Archive is, and even more? Is that not what they've attempted to fulfill for a while now and the primary reason they haven't accomplish it is due to a legal war with large IP distributors and their armies of top paid laywers shaping the interpretation of copyright legislations?
wnoise 3y ago
There are still a lot of non-digital works produced, though it is shrinking in proportion.

slowhadoken 3y ago

This is way more common with phones but they handle it better. The iPhone 4 came out the same year as the 3DS. Consoles have to prioritize cross compatibility to keep competing with the Steam Deck.

Willish42 3y ago

As sad as this news makes me for the preservation of eShop stuff, the modding community tends to rally around Nintendo products and I have pretty high faith that things will be preserved one way or another by the awesome work of modders and the emulation community. It's a sad state of affairs for copyright law, but generally by the time Nintendo shuts down "official" access to content for a console generation, rom files are readily available from a few google searches and a relatively well-thought-out and simple modding process for the hardware. There are many first party nintendo games and remakes that still haven't made it to newer consoles like the Switch yet. Hopefully Nintendo comes up with better backwards compatibility in the future for current Switch titles, but assuming they won't as they often don't, piracy and emulation tend to fill in the gaps pretty well in my experience.

pierat 3y ago

Piracy is ethical when purchasing doesnt equal owning. This is yet another case of falsely advertised "ownership", that is really a rental.

deergomoo 3y ago

This will not help a jot with online play, but it’s worth noting that it’s very very easy to softmod any model of 3DS: https://3ds.hacks.guide/ https://3ds.hacks.guide/ The 3DS has a fantastic library but a good chunk of it is very difficult to obtain these days—either because it was only available digitally, or because prices for used physical copies are unreasonable. It’s sad that Nintendo don’t give a shit about preservation past their ability to sell old games over and over, but if I can no longer give the creator money for a game I’m of the opinion that largely absolves any immorality of piracy.

INTPenis 3y ago

Aww the 3DS is still a very nice retro console where you can play anything from the Nintendo store. I'm assuming they mean the nintendo store for 3DS will shut down then? I gave mine to my nephew a while back, it's probably broken by now. But it's still sad. Sometimes I just feel like playing some classic games like Castlevania, Metroid and Earthbound.

jcotton42 3y ago
The 3DS and Wii U eShops have already shut down.

slothtrop 3y ago

The interest surrounding these issues suggests to me that PC gaming is going to win greater market share. Steam placed a big bet on this well before the Deck, but they were too early. The ability to upgrade, and still have easy access to your long-standing library, will be increasingly appealing to consumers, at least those who aren't merely casual. Either consoles will go from glorified locked-down PCs to actual PCs, or gaming PCs will just resemble consoles more through quality-of-life features.

pipeline_peak 3y ago

Every generation I wonder when it’s worth it to buy games digitally so I can transfer them over to the following console. So far I have yet to see Nintendo make any effort and it really should be a crime. These things are literal PC’s and tablets, there is no technical obstacle anymore.