Nintendo has officially announced the end of their platform integration with Twitter.
Microsoft was the first to end their integration for Xbox in April 2023, and Sony followed suit in November of that same year. This means sharing pictures and clips on Twitter will now be constrained for all three platforms.
Nintendo goes into detail on what services are affected on an official support page. As it turns out, Nintendo has also made other changes to sharing that isn’t directly connected to Twitter itself.
So, obviously, you will no longer be able to share a picture or video that’s in your Nintendo Switch’s Albums, and post them directly to Twitter. This functionality is still in Facebook for now but Nintendo reserves the right to remove it at any time.
In Splatoon 3, posts you make from your mailbox can no longer be sent directly to Twitter or Facebook, but will go to Nintendo’s servers. This safeguard allows them to protect players 13 years old and younger.
In Splatoon 2, posts on the Inkopolis Square mailbox can no longer be sent to Twitter. The Inkopolis Square itself will only display data made in the game software, meaning its Miiverse-like functionality is done.
In Super Smash Bros Ultimate, it will no longer be able to send pictures from your Nintendo Switch albums to Smash World, the feature in the Nintendo Switch Online mobile app.
Finally, Switch owners will no longer be able to send friend requests to social media for other Switch owners. In a twisted irony, Nintendo reveals that this feature still works on the 3DS and the Wii U.
As some Switch owners have pointed out, there is still a way to share media from the Switch to social media, but it’s tedious and completely inconvenient. You can either try to get your Switch to connect to a mobile device via QR code, or get out a USB-C cable to connect your Switch to a PC. You can make the latter work if your PC does not run Windows, but if we’re honest about it, none of this is worth the effort.
And it bears repeating that none of the console companies are willing to pay the $ 42,000 minimum of monthly access fee to Twitter’s API, when they used to use this functionality freely. Twitter is hard pressed to make a case for them to do so, especially given the platform’s own current fortunes.
In any case, of course many fans are talking about Nintendo bringing back Miiverse. I would reckon Nintendo could make a new social network to connect to their games relatively cheaply, using the Mastodon software and the ActivityPub API, but perhaps they don’t want to deal with the regulatory troubles of running a social network around the world. Especially since Nintendo’s core audience remains younger gamers. But you know there are some fans who will always wonder.
