Nintendo Will Shut Down Miiverse This November

If anything signals that Nintendo is running away from their Wii U era as fast as possible, it’s this: Miiverse is about to be shut down. The unique social messaging service was created for the Wii U gamepad and later ported to 3DS. The move was confirmed for Japan yesterday, and confirmed globally today.

It’s understandable why this is happening — now that Nintendo has a much more successful product on the market, they’d prefer not to spend any more resources on a failure. That doesn’t mean it isn’t sad. Not only will the Wii U’s opening screen, directly tied to Miiverse, feel empty now, so will a lot of games that took advantage of the service. Effects range from the simple absence of user comments to the disappearance of entire features.

• Super Mario Maker (Wii U): Users will still be able to share levels, but will no longer be able to comment on them.
• Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Tipping Stars (Wii U, Nintendo 3DS): While users will still be able to play Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Tipping Stars and complete all 88 levels in the main game, the Community feature will be discontinued, preventing players from sharing levels and receiving additional Stars. As there will be a limit to the number of Stars that can be obtained, not all objects may be unlocked from the Workshop.
• Splatoon (Wii U): Miiverse posts will no longer display in Inkopolis Plaza or the game’s stage maps.
• Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS (Wii U, Nintendo 3DS): The Miiverse stage will still be playable, but Miiverse user posts will not display in the background. Players will also be unable to post replays to YouTube/Miiverse, share stages or create tournaments.
• Mario Kart 8 (Wii U): Players will not be able to upload game-play videos to YouTube since they also post to Miiverse at the same time. The tournament function will also not be available.
• Super Mario 3D World (Wii U): In Super Mario 3D World, the Miiverse posts that appear on the course select screen and when selecting courses will disappear. Players will still be able to collect in-game stamps, but not post them to Miiverse.
• Xenoblade Chronicles X (Wii U): In Xenoblade Chronicles X, the BLADE report feature will no longer be available.

There are other titles not mentioned in Nintendo’s press release that use Miiverse, such as the bottle messages in Wind Waker HD. We can assume all titles that use Miiverse in some way will have those features dummied out.

If you feel like digging out the Wii U (assuming you still have one) and reliving the Miiverse experience one last time, you have until November 8.