Earlier this year, Nintendo announced they would be ending support for 3DS and Wii U online services in April 2024, which would put and end to all online multiplayer and other related features for games on both consoles.

Unfortunately, it seems that Nintendo may have started the shutdown process a bit early for some. Reports have surfaced that brand new Nintendo 3DS and WiiU accounts created within the last month are no longer able to access online services for various games, such as Super Mario Maker. Attempting to connect online with this game would throw up a “106-0502” error.

Pretendo, a fan outlet aiming to create a NNID replacement for these older consoles, believes that this issue arose because Nintendo started scaling back the number of servers for 3DS and WiiU games in preparation for shutting down their online services for good. They go on to speculate that it affects newly created Nintendo accounts specifically because of changes made to Nintendo’s internal account system, also related to the shutdown but on a more technical level.

At the time of this writing, Nintendo has yet to officially comment or correct this issue, although it is unlikely that they will do. Stay tuned for more updates as they come.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.

[Update]: Nintendo has responded to and corrected the issue according to a follow-up report from Pretendo. You can read up on the full details via their blog here.

[Nintendo Network]

Update: Nintendo has fixed the issue that was preventing new Wii U and 3DS users from playing online, according to @PretendoNetwork.

There's still more problems (read their blog post for more info, link in the quoted tweet), but this is a positive first step. https://t.co/pNJfN7ekLV

— OatmealDome (@OatmealDome) December 27, 2023