Key findings
- Nintendo is stopping repairs for the New Nintendo 3DS, which will affect owners of this particular model.
- Support for Nintendo 2DS and New Nintendo 3DS XL remains unaffected by the recent change.
- The closure of the 3DS online services and eShop underscores the transition to the highly successful Nintendo Switch.
Nintendo has informed the public that it will no longer be able to repair defective New Nintendo 3DS machines. This comes nearly a decade after Nintendo launched the handheld and its larger sibling, the New Nintendo 3DS XL, in North America.
In February, months before Nintendo ended its repair service for the Wii U, the Japanese gaming giant announced that it would only be able to offer repairs for the Nintendo 2DS, New Nintendo 3DS and New Nintendo 3DS XL as long as it had a supply of the parts needed for the systems. Now, the company has announced that it has exhausted its stock of spare parts for one of the aforementioned consoles and is ending support for the device, regardless of how many people are still using it.
Nintendo will no longer accept repairs for the New Nintendo 3DS (product ID KTR-001) starting August 28, according to a statement from the company’s official customer support account on Twitter. Owners of the Nintendo 2DS (FTR-001) and New Nintendo 3DS XL (RED-001) can breathe a sigh of relief as the recent policy change did not affect the two systems. The latter handheld is considered by many to be one of the best models in Nintendo’s entire 3DS lineup.
New Nintendo 3DS loses official repair support
Nintendo shut down online services for 3DS devices in April, removing official support for multiplayer, Internet rankings and data sharing. About a year earlier, the company had closed the 3DS eShop, which made it impossible to buy and download digital content on the handhelds. An estimated 600 digital-only 3DS games were previously available to Western audiences.
Nintendo’s newly completed museum in Uji, Kyoto, which is set to open on October 2, is set to feature an exhibition on the 3DS series. Photos show that some sort of giant 3DS statue has been erected there.
The last publication in 3DS family, the New Nintendo 2DS XL, launched in 2017 alongside the first version of the Switch. Since then, the Switch has become one of the best-selling consoles of all time, shipping over 143 million units as of June. Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa has promised that there will be an announcement on the successor to the Switch, a system many are already referring to as the Switch 2, before the end of the current fiscal year on the last day of March 2025.
Nintendo
- Date of foundation
- 23 September 1889
- headquarters
- Kyoto, Kyoto, Japan
- Parent company
- Nintendo
