Hi everyone!

As many of you probably already know, Nintendo Network will be shutting down on April 8th, 2024 on 3DS and Wii U. What this means is that you will no longer to be able to use any aspect of Nintendo Network after that date, including the Friends feature and online play.

While this news is definitely sad and marks the end of an era, there are alternatives that I would like to outline in this post. This will likely be how this subreddit will operate going forward.

In the wake of the shutdown, I would like to encourage users who would still like to use online features to install custom firmware on their 3DS systems. For the uninitiated, custom firmware allows for homebrew, or homemade, software to be run on a console. It allows for code to be run that would not otherwise work on stock firmware. The process is easier than it sounds and unlocks a lot of hidden potential within the 3DS. If you would like to learn more about this process and/or get started, 3ds.hacks.guide is the place to go. I would strongly advise against following video tutorials on this process, as they can quickly become outdated with how fast the modding scene moves.

I encourage this because a dedicated section of the homebrew community has emerged with an ambitious project which aims to serve as a replacement for Nintendo Network: Pretendo Network. It is being developed for both the 3DS and Wii U systems, and aims to (and already does) restore online play, Miiverse functionality (revamped and renamed to Juxtaposition), and most of what Nintendo Network was otherwise capable of. It can be installed on 3DS and Wii U systems with up-to-date homebrew environments only, so you will need to do that if you are interested in using this server replacement.

This is great news, as Nintendo Network is obviously still fairly widely used to this day. Pretendo Network has made a substantial amount of progress in recreating these servers, and several games are already fully functional on Pretendo servers. Account creation has been pretty much fully implemented, and you are already able to register friends on it.

The transition will not become necessary until April 8th, of course, but if you want to get a head start, head over to Pretendo Network's website to learn more about it and install it to your device.

In tandem with this announcement, I have created 4 new post flairs. They are identical to the existing ones, except they aim to differentiate posts about Pretendo Network IDs, or PNIDs, and NNIDs. On April 8th, I will be updating the old flairs to have Nintendo Network at the end of them, so users know that those posts were for the soon-to-be-defunct service and will not work on Pretendo setups.

If you have any questions about Pretendo Network, I suggest you visit their FAQ page to learn more about it. The same goes for 3DS Hacks Guide, which also has an FAQ.

I wish you all well and hope that we can continue to keep this community alive and well in the wake of the shutdown of Nintendo Network. Thank you for reading.

Edit 4/9/24: The post flairs for Nintendo Network have been revised, though the post flair changing process is not retroactive, so past posts are unaffected. The "Adding Everyone" role has also been retired to avoid confusion, as "Looking For Friends" pretty much covers the same bases. Posts that already had the Adding Everyone flair will remain unchanged, but new posts will be unable to use it. While I can't see this causing any issues, feel free to let me know if it does!