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Nintendo Wii U and 3DS owners had a disappointing day yesterday as April 8th marked the official shutdown of all online servers for the consoles. This means that games such as Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon are no longer playable online, at least not by official methods. But, this sadly means that two Call of Duty games have also gone offline, Black Ops 2 and Ghosts.
Call of Duty Black Ops 2 and Ghosts were released on the Nintendo Wii U in 2012 and 2013 respectively, with Black Ops 2 serving as a launch title for the system. These games mark the final entries in the series to be released on Nintendo platforms. This is likely due to the low Wii U sales, with the console selling just 13 million units worldwide, and the Nintendo Switch being too weak to handle modern Call of Duty titles. Although the console didn’t sell well, and the online communities for the two Call of Duty games were largely inactive, they did see a small number of players, with approximately 45 players still playing yesterday according to U/Calwings on Reddit.
With the Nintendo servers being shut off, it now means that both games can only be played offline. It was theorized that the two games could survive the shut-off, as the Wii entries including Call of Duty 4, Black Ops 1, and Modern Warfare 3 survived the online shutdown due to the servers being privately hosted by Activision rather than utilizing Nintendo’s technology. This led to the servers remaining online for nine years after all other games went offline before Activision finally pulled the plug in 2023. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case when it came to the Wii U games as they too went offline with the rest of the Wii U and 3DS libraries of games.
For the small number of players that were still active in both games, there is a slither of hope though. A fan-made project called Pretendo is actively working on creating its own online functionality for both the Wii U and 3DS to allow players to continue playing games such as Mario Kart 7 and 8, Super Mario Maker, and Splatoon. As of writing, there are only a handful of games supported, which don’t include the Call of Duty games, but with enough time online functionality could likely be restored in the future. For those who don’t want to wait, the servers for the PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One versions of the game remain online and have active communities.
