Nintendo shutting down Wii U TVii next month. What’s a Wii U TVii?
Perhaps my incredulous response to this report explains everything. ‘Cause despite having a Wii U, its Wii U TVii service is a mystery to me. A mystery that shall be disappearing next month.
After nearly three years of letting Wii U owners in North America and Japan awkwardly interact with cable and streaming video services via their game pads, Nintendo TVii is officially going off the air on August 11. Everyone try to stay calm.
One of the Wii U console’s most promising pre-launch features, Nintendo TVii promised to turn television watching into a robust social experience, tracking user’s favorite shows, making suggestions based on familial preferences, integrating with all of the major streaming video services, programming DVR recordings and acting as a second screen experience on the Wii U game pad. It sounded pretty amazing.
It wasn’t really. It was awkward and fumbling and a year later the Xbox One came along with its HDMI pass-through and voice-controlled TV watching and made Nintendo TVii look silly.
So yeah, six months after Nintendo of Europe gave up trying to get TVii working in its territory altogether, the service is shutting down completely. The news arrived, as most important news does, via Miiverse.
After almost 3 years of finding, watching and engaging with Nintendo TVii, we will be ending the service on August 11, 2015 at 3:00pm PT. At the same time, we will be closing the Nintendo TVii Miiverse community.
We sincerely thank you for all of your engagement within the community and the Nintendo TVii service. We look forward to your contributions within our many other Miiverse communities.