Nintendo Shutting Down Wii, DS Online Features

The new generation is definitely here now, and for Nintendo it’s been almost 18 months since they released their latest device, the Wii U (and even longer since the 3DS came out). Perhaps it’s no surprise then that the house of Mario is shutting down their online services from last-gen. With almost no expections, the Wii and DS are now offline consoles.

There will be people reading who ask themselves whether the Wii and DS ever actually had much in the way of online functionality, and it’s a fair point. Whereas almost every title on the PS3 and Xbox 360 had some degree of multiplayer, that’s certainly not true on the Wii, nor on the DS. There were specific examples that could hold your attention for hundreds of hours – Mario Kart Wii, for one – but probably not even more than twenty.

The DS was hit a little harder, but mostly because of the Pokemon games. There are some 13 Pokemon games losing trading and battling features – not a good piece of news for those that want to catch ’em all legitimately.

That though, is the silver lining here. Any offline functionality will still remain unchanged, so you’ll be able to play everything as it was – up until you try and connect with others anyway. That means that, yes, you’ll be able to use an action replay to get every single Pokemon if you choose, and the single player will be the same as it always was.

Nintendo have confirmed that Netflix and the internet browser will remain working, and of course you’ll still be able to access the various shops and purchase new things.

For a full list of services, check out the official Nintendo website.