Nintendo has announced that Miiverse, its quirky social network launched alongside the Wii U, is shutting down this year. The Wii U’s chat app and TVii television service are also set to end alongside it on November 8th, though the announcement has only been made in Japan so far; the TVii service in the US was entirely separate and closed down over two years ago.
Miiverse was most notable for the extraordinary hand-drawn posts that would filter into Wii U and 3DS games that supported the service. This explanatory image from Nintendo shows how empty these games will feel once Miiverse is gone:
Nintendo says it'll provide a way for users to download their own posts through the web version of Miiverse.
Nintendo’s new console, the Switch, has no support for Miiverse or pretty much anything else beside games, although Splatoon 2 replicates similar functionality. The Switch is off to a far better start than its predecessor, of course, but the death of Miiverse highlights just how different a system it really is.