UPDATE (10/22): Nintendo has scheduled another round of maintenance for most of its online services this Monday, October 26th. This session, scheduled from 1:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. PST, will unplug online play, rankings and eShop services for both the 3DS and Wii U. Nintendo has yet to officially comment on the purpose of these interruptions.
Next Monday, October 19th, Nintendo is bringing its entire online network down for some tinkering. This includes eShop and online services for both the Wii U and 3DS, as well as the Wii Shopping Channel and the Nintendo DSi Shop. The scheduled downtime is 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., Pacific Time.
While scheduled maintenance is fairly common for individual online services, it’s not too often that Nintendo brings all of them down at once. This leads to speculation that this interruption could be related to Nintendo’s new unified account system, outlined back in May by the late president Satoru Iwata. The new system is promised to span all of Nintendo’s consoles (including the in-development NX), as well as smart devices and PC.
With the closure of Club Nintendo earlier this year, and Nintendo’s partnership with mobile account experts DeNA, all signs point to an imminent restructuring of online services. Even if this maintenance isn’t an official rollout, it may be laying some groundwork behind the scenes. Either way, we expect to hear more about Nintendo’s new universal account system very soon.
Leave a Comment
Written by Brittin Shauers
Brittin literally grew up with Link, Mario and Samus. These three characters and their worlds collectively capture everything that he loves about video games.
