Key Takeaways
- Nintendo discontinues repairs for New Nintendo 3DS, impacting owners of that specific model.
- Support for Nintendo 2DS and New Nintendo 3DS XL remains unaffected by the recent change.
- Closure of 3DS online services and eShop highlights the shift towards the highly successful Nintendo Switch.
Nintendo has informed the public that it will no longer be able to repair broken 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 discontinued repair services for the Wii U, the Japanese gaming juggernaut revealed that it would only be able to provide restorations for the Nintendo 2DS, New Nintendo 3DS, and New Nintendo 3DS XL while it maintained a stock of necessary parts for the systems. Fast forward to the present, and the company has announced that it has depleted its inventory of spares for one of the aforementioned consoles, ending support for the device regardless of how many people still use it.
Nintendo will no longer accept repairs for the New Nintendo 3DS, product ID KTR-001, as of August 28, the company’s official customer support account on Twitter said in a statement. 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. Around a year prior, the company had closed the 3DS eShop, which notably made purchasing and downloading digital content impossible on the handhelds. An estimated 600 digital-only 3DS games were previously available to western audiences.
Nintendo’s newly finished museum in Uji, Kyoto that is set to open on October 2 is expected to feature an exhibit dedicated to the 3DS line. Photos showed that what appeared to be a giant statue of a 3DS has been installed at the site.
The last release in the 3DS family, the New Nintendo 2DS XL, launched in 2017 alongside the first iteration of the Switch. Since then, the Switch has become one of the highest-selling consoles of all time, having shipped more than 143 million units by June. Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa has promised that there will be an announcement regarding the successor of the Switch, a system that many already refer to as the Switch 2, before the current fiscal year ends on the last day of March 2025.