Nintendo says it will shut down its Miiverse social network, launched alongside the Wii U, on November 8
Nintendo has announced that Miiverse, its quirky social network launched alongside the Wii U, is shutting down this year. The Wii U's chat app and TVii television service are also set …
Context & Ripple Effects
Miiverse is the second pillar of the Wii U's software stack to fall: Nintendo already retired the console's TVii television service back in 2015, and the shutdown notice lands just weeks before the company moved to close the Wii Shop channel on January 30, 2019. Taken together, these announcements show Nintendo dismantling the Wii U era piece by piece rather than in one stroke.
The pattern extends beyond the console itself — Nintendo later shut down Miitomo, its first smartphone game, after barely two years, suggesting the company is pruning underperforming social and community experiments across platforms, not just legacy hardware services.
First-order effects
- Wii U owners lose Miiverse on November 8, along with the console's chat app and TVii, stripping the system's built-in social layer from every game that integrated drawing and posting into its menus.
Second-order effects
- The Wii Shop channel closure announced shortly after means Wii U digital purchases and the console's storefront follow the community features out the door, leaving the hardware with shrinking reasons to stay connected.
Third-order effects
- By 2023-2024 the wind-down reaches its endpoint when Nintendo shuts down multiplayer and other online services for the 3DS and Wii U entirely (after closing their eShops), establishing that Nintendo treats console online ecosystems as finite-lifecycle products — a structural problem for game preservation and for buyers weighing long-term value of Nintendo hardware.
The trend: Nintendo is executing a decade-long, staged retirement of its Wii U and 3DS-era online services, consolidating the company's network infrastructure around the Switch generation.