Miiverse

Nintendo's hand-drawn social network

Shut down
19902026

Miiverse was Nintendo's built-in social network for the Wii U and 3DS, launched in November 2012: game-specific communities where players posted hand-drawn notes and screenshots under famously strict moderation. Nintendo shut it down on 8 November 2017 after the Switch launched without it.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2012
  2. 18 November 2012 Launch
    Miiverse launches with the Wii U

    Hand-drawn posts and per-game communities, moderated hard.

  3. 2013
  4. 9 December 2013 Feature
    Comes to Nintendo 3DS

    The handheld audience joins the network.

  5. 2017
  6. 3 March 2017 Decline
    The Switch launches without Miiverse

    Social features are outsourced to phones; the network is orphaned.

  7. 29 August 2017 Shutdown announced
    Discontinuation announced

    Post archives offered on request.

  8. 8 November 2017 Shutdown
    Miiverse shuts down

    Five years of tiny drawings go offline.

The site through time

Browse miiverse.nintendo.net as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Nintendo 2012–2017 Founded Built with Hatena for Wii U and 3DS

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: Nintendo discontinued Miiverse on 8 November 2017, noting that many users had shifted to general social networking services; the Switch shipped without it.

Our analysis: Miiverse was chained to the Wii U, Nintendo's worst-selling home console, and the Switch deliberately outsourced social features to phones. A moderated, drawing-first community for game fans had no path forward once its hardware died.

History [edit]

A gentler internet

Miiverse launched with the Wii U on 18 November 2012 as something the internet rarely produces: a genuinely wholesome public space. Every game had a community; posts could be typed or drawn by hand on the GamePad, and the drawing tools turned comment threads into galleries of miniature art, from stick figures to astonishing stylus masterpieces. Posts surfaced inside games themselves; drowning in Super Mario 3D World meant seeing another player's encouraging doodle on the level select.

Nintendo moderated it ferociously (no friend codes, no profanity, human review of reports) and the result was an all-ages community with a culture entirely its own, including in-jokes, celebrity artists, and the eternal chaos of children asking for Femia.

Death by console cycle

The Wii U sold about 13.5 million units, Nintendo's worst home-console performance, and the 3DS was aging. When the Switch arrived in March 2017 with no Miiverse and social sharing handed off to Twitter and Facebook, the writing was on the wall. Nintendo announced the end on 29 August 2017 and shut the service on 8 November 2017. Users could request an archive of their posts; the artists scattered, and fan-built museums preserved what they could of gaming's kindest social network.

Similar projects

MySpace A place for friends 2003–now Google+ The social network everyone was signed up to and nobody used 2011–2019 Digg The front page of the web, until v4 2004–2012 Bebo The $850 million write-off 2005–2013 Friendster The social network that came first 2002–2015 Orkut Brazil's living room, built in a 20% project 2004–2014

Sources [edit]

  1. Miiverse Service Discontinuation FAQ Nintendo 29 August 2017 [archived]
  2. Nintendo to close Miiverse social network BBC News 29 August 2017 [archived]

Last verified: 11 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).