Highlights
- Classic Call of Duty games on select Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS have permanently gone offline, leaving players unable to engage in multiplayer matches or online activities.
- The affected games are from a time when the franchise was more grounded in realism and before Call of Duty had a habit of reviving its villains.
- While the discontinued online features may not impact many players, some still enjoy the classic COD experience and may prefer it over the newer live-service titles.
A number of classic Call of Duty games appear to have gone permanently offline on select Nintendo platforms, making it impossible for players to join up for multiplayer matches or engage in any online activity. Though most COD fans have moved on from these titles, the fact that some of their most important features are now unavailable is not great news.
It's particularly notable that the games affected by the aforementioned issue are all from a time when the franchise was slightly more grounded in realism, narratively speaking, and before Call of Duty kept reviving its villains. Those who aren't particularly keen on the more recent shark-jumping escapades of COD may therefore be particularly saddened with what's happened.
Specifically, all the Call of Duty games on Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS systems have now gone offline, according to reports. CharlieIntel managed to get Activision to chime in on the issue, only to discover that the source of the problem is the discontinuation of the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection service on the Wii, DS, and DSi consoles. COD titles released on the referenced platforms used the Wi-Fi Connection service for their online features, and its sunsetting means that the games' respective multiplayer components are now dead in the water.
Though it's a given that very few people would be playing Call of Duty on Nintendo's old consoles, some gamers still enjoy classic COD quite a lot. Moreover, the newer titles and their live-service approach to content, balancing, progression, and monetization may have put some people off, making them jump back into franchise entries from the early 2010s instead.
The good news, of course, is that the console and PC versions of Call of Duty from this era, notably titles such as Modern Warfare 3 and Black Ops, are still up and running just fine. And it's entirely possible that a future COD might bring back classic features for veteran players' sake, even if said veterans would almost certainly need to contend with neon-colored celebrity skins and the ever-present seasonal content grind in the end.
The next Call of Duty game is getting revealed very soon, in fact, and everything points to it being a direct follow-up to 2022's Modern Warfare 2, with some of that game's content transitioning over to the new title. It's sure to be a far cry from the classics whose multiplayer features were lost on Nintendo consoles, but it's still worth keeping an eye on.