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Nintendo is shutting down online play on 3DS and Wii U in April 2024 | VGC
(www.videogameschronicle.com)
this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
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Man, you'd think that if there was only, say, 100 people a day using this service they could just scale the service down. Whatever the number of active users they could just scale the service down, that number isn't likely to spike again ever (and even if it did no one would be surprised if there were service interruptions on a service that old).
Maybe it's a security issue? But there are no credit card transactions in online multiplayer? Idk.
Well, no matter how scaled down they make it, there is going to be a maintenance cost. They would have to keep the tech stack updated and keep up with latest security practices, otherwise it could be a security issue.
Not saying they can't afford to do it, just sharing another perspective.
The PS3 and Xbox 360 are 17 and 18 years old. The 3DS and Wii U have just reached 12 and 10 years old.
Microsoft and Sony seem be able to keep the servers up without any issues. The stores are even online too (although the PS3 store might close soon). Additionally, Sony isn’t profiting off the PS3 as the servers are free.
Sure they have more money than Nintendo but it is very frustrating that the servers are already going down… hopefully Pretendo will be able to restore functionality.
I think the issue is that Nintendo Network was a completely different system, they changed it completely with Switch. That is why everyone had to create new accounts etc.
With PS and Xbox they may have updated a lot, but I think it's still the same system.
Also, PS3 and Vita store were closing a while back, but there was a huge outcry and Sony changed the decision. Maybe there wasn't such a huge outcry for 3DS?
But yeah, no matter the reason, it's frustrating for the customers. Pretendo seeems to be the way forward, let's hope they release something soon.
I agree. Nintendo made a bad decision when they designed 3 different online systems for 3 systems (Wii, 3DS/Wii U and Switch).
Pretendo is already functional if you pay for their Patreon. Not everything works but I’ve heard it’s in a pretty good state.
Microsoft can keep it up because they own their CDN. They dont have to pay a 3rd party company for upkeep.
Sometimes most people with the knowledge are gone, the people left need to keep things relatively up to date for security reasons, but the legacy systems aren't as nice, so it takes time and is generally unfun to do. Sometimes a new law in Europe goes live and you should be able to add a pop-up somewhere, but when you follow the docs on how to update stuff, it doesn't even work for a myriad of reasons. It's not like maintaining a software for 12 years really, which a ton of businesses do successfully. When you're just keeping something alive that works and almost never crashes, you get to a point where doing mandated new updates gets harder and harder. And now with the shops gone, there's even less of a money incentive to keep the thing going :(
I assume that there is some fixed resource cost for the servers on top of the per-user cost. For example, they need to maintain a user database of every single single account that ever played online.
Also, systems that are designed to scale up well are often not designed to scale down (for example, the match making queue is sized for 10,000 users. It may be something that is not too hard to fix, but fixing it would involve rewriting code that they are not familiar with (all of the devs probably moved on to other work and likely many are no longer with the company) and is going to introduce all sorts of new scale issues (for example, a server needs 1 GB of free memory to run a vulnerability scan. If you cut its memory allocation by 50%, that might not be the case and you will not know it until the 3rd Tuesday of the month when the scan is scheduled).
It is possible that it costs Nintendo almost the same to run online match making for 10 players as it does for 10,000.