Nintendo’s Miitomo app shuts down two years after its launch

By Trevor Mogg May 10, 2018

Miitomo fans, we have some bad news for you. Nintendo has shut down the social app just two years after its launch.

Miitomo was the Japanese game giant’s first smartphone app, but despite the hype that surrounded its March 2016 arrival, as well as the backing of an outfit like Nintendo, it failed to win the hearts of the masses.

Nintendo said it stopped selling Miitomo coins on January 24, and disabled the app on Wednesday, May 9, disabling all of its features.

Attempting to sign into the app and link your Nintendo account will now result in you receiving an error message noting that Miitomo is undergoing “maintenance.”

Sidekick Mii characters have been deleted, unless you chose to save them as a QR code prior to May 9. You can then transfer them to Mii Maker on the Nintendo 3DS or the Wii U, Nintendo said.

Any Miifotos that you wanted to keep also must have been saved to your smartphone prior to the shutdown. Nintendo recently released the winning entries in its final “Miifoto” contest on Twitter, showing users’ best memories with the app. The winners include silly shots with friends, as well as more heartfelt and sentimental images reflecting on good memories with the app. We swear we’re not tearing up over here.

The Kyoto, Japan-based company didn’t offer a reason for why it ended support for its avatar-based social app, but evidently, it now wants to put its resources into its newer mobile game offerings such as Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp.

In our review of Miitomo soon after its launch, Digital Trends found the app “interesting and fun,” but we certainly weren’t bowled over by it, calling it out for its “lack of any dedicated purpose or utility in the real world.” We also found that it drained our phone’s battery much faster than other apps, and used up a lot of storage space, too.

While Miitomo made some gains with a big update in November 2016, that and subsequent improvements clearly weren’t enough to propel the app to great heights, leading to Nintendo’s decision to discontinue it.

Updated on May 10: The app has been shut down.

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