Nintendo removing Wifi for DS and Wii this May

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Pin Clock

Pin Clock

Project Leader
Minus Backroom
I figured I should post this in News due to the fact that it's pretty Minus relevant.

http://kotaku.com/nintendo-killing-onli ... 1532216462

As of May 20, 2014, certain online functionality, including online play, matchmaking and leaderboards for many Wii, Nintendo DS and Nintendo DSi games, will no longer be accessible. For a list of Nintendo games and services that are affected, please check http://www.nintendo.com. Users can still play these games in offline mode, which continues to offer a rich game-play experience. Other online functionality on Wii and Nintendo DS, such as access to the Wii Shop Channel, the Nintendo DSi Shop and video-on-demand services, are also not affected at this time.
Online play for Wii U and Nintendo 3DS games will be unaffected (aside from the Wii mode on Wii U and Nintendo DS games played on Nintendo 3DS family systems).
Our focus now shifts to readying our Wii U and Nintendo 3DS matchmaking services for upcoming games such as Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros.
We at Nintendo sincerely thank our fans for their continued support of our company's legacy systems. Your enthusiasm for games made for these systems speaks to their longevity, and the passion of Nintendo fans.
Click to expand...

In short, Brawl's wifi will no longer connect to Nintendo's servers, so we may have to resort to using Dolphin for online play. If the demand is high enough, we will make a tutorial thread explaining how to set this up.

Until then, enjoy playing Minus on your Wii and make the best of times in the worst of times!
 
F

Ferrous Faucet

Well-Known Member
I find this to be an incredibly disappointing trend in today's video game industry.
Games are designed with multi-player functionality, or other online features, but the online services cannot be maintained forever. This means that as the game ages, it becomes less fun as players get bored and move on to other games (decreasing the players in the multi-player environment), which leads to a spiral of more players leaving because there are less players playing.
Also, in the case of games with other online functionality (such as Brawl's daily custom stages), it means certain features in the game simply become unavailable. For example, in Final Fantasy III for DS, you can't get all the best gear and weapons without being able to send an e-mail to other players via Nintendo Wi-Fi. Since this is being discontinued in May, nobody who hasn't already done that in the game will be able to complete those sidequests.
Brawl will still be fun to play offline. Other games which depend on online functionality for the entire gameplay, such as the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena genre, are destroyed because of situations like this.

Unfortunately, not being a software developer, I am in no position to change this. A possible solution might be to add the functionality for online services to be taken over by private parties after the game is no longer officially sponsored by the original developer. What I mean is, a game like Brawl could have been designed to allow for this to happen, since Nintendo/Hal should have known that at some point in the future they would be unable/unwilling to continue online support for it. So when they developed the game, they could have allowed for it to be supported by private servers once Nintendo's servers are no longer supporting it.
 
Lightning

Lightning

Ikesexual
I don't know how I feel about this.

I like it because Smash4 will have better wifi.
I don't like it because I can't play Brawl online anymore. (I know theres dolphin, but I don't have a gamecube to usb thingy).
 
Bent 00

Bent 00

Longtime Limit Breaker
This is very sad news for me, since my old PC can't run Dolphin. :(

Nonetheless, I'll get a PC that can eventually. How do you use Dolphin to play online without using Nintendo WFC? Is the connection just as good or better? Can a Wii Remote be connected to a PC? I have a Mayflash GC -> Wii adapter, but no GC -> USB adapter.

I've had a lot of fun playing Minus online, and learned a lot I would not have offline.

Now to find a list of all Wii & DS games I need to use the online features of before they're gone...
 
Gold_TSG

Gold_TSG

Can't stop The Dorf Train.
Somehow I knew I wouldn't get to enjoy my online adventures with minus for long. All things I enjoy eventually end abruptly.
 
justadood

justadood

Just a dood with ideas
i have never played one game of brawl or brawl minus online T-T i just don't have time for it... but i was hoping that after meeting you guys i'd finally have someone to try it out with... i'm really sad that that's not the case, and i'm pretty bummed out that i still won't even have time to for a long while...
 
Bent 00

Bent 00

Longtime Limit Breaker
justadood said:
i have never played one game of brawl or brawl minus online T-T i just don't have time for it... but i was hoping that after meeting you guys i'd finally have someone to try it out with... i'm really sad that that's not the case, and i'm pretty bummed out that i still won't even have time to for a long while...
Click to expand...
You've still got nearly three months... You can't set aside a few hours to play online before May 20? You must stay really busy.

On the bright side, there's SSB4 to look forward to, and who knows... Maybe someone will figure out how to play Wii and DS games on a private server? I saw some people discussing it over on GBATemp.net.
 
justadood

justadood

Just a dood with ideas
i hope servers become available... it'd also make it possible to create a server specifically for brawl minus :D maybe even make codes so newcomers don't need to have an sd card with the hacks in place to play brawlminus on these servers!! ^^
 
Gold_TSG

Gold_TSG

Can't stop The Dorf Train.
If we're really lucky, any servers that might get set up for us after Nintendo shuts theirs down might be able to handle the online for brawl better, allowing for superior online play without our good friend Mr. Lag.
 
Q

Queso2469

Member
It would be pretty tough to write a server without knowing a lot about it. What people would have to do would be to record the network traffic to and from the server and try and figure out how it worked. Then writing it might be a whole different issue. The game itself would need modification to connect to the new server. Someone would have to host a server with enough power and network speed would be needed. It would be a pretty big logistical and programming challenge.
 
NEWB

NEWB

Well-Known Member
Guys! Guys! What's the worry? Project M will just do it! And at that point, the minus team will have to help out since there is no way we can get it on our own! Unless it's easy.
 
Pin Clock

Pin Clock

Project Leader
Minus Backroom
NEWB said:
Guys! Guys! What's the worry? Project M will just do it! And at that point, the minus team will have to help out since there is no way we can get it on our own! Unless it's easy.
Click to expand...

Actually, the Project M team released a statement saying they aren't doing anything about it. They have less of a reason to care since a lot of their plays come from tournaments and Dolphin.Also because they'd have to pay for and maintain the server, which would also question them letting other mods use it if they achieved it themselves.

People are doing things about it, though, and developing their own servers to keep the main two wii communities (Brawl and MK Wii) alive. We're keeping a close eye on these developments.
 
Bent 00

Bent 00

Longtime Limit Breaker
Sounds like Wiimm has gotten Mario Kart Wii to work on private servers, so hopefully Brawl will work too?

You can submit your Friend Codes here so they won't get lost when WiFi shuts down.

You need to have at least one Registered Friend who has also has you Registered for this to make any difference.
 
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