Nintendo will wind down 'Super Mario Maker' for Wii U on March 31st

You’ll have to move on from the original Super Mario Maker if you want to create maps. Nintendo has warned that course uploads will no longer work for the Wii U game as of March 31st, 2021. If you want to craft a ridiculously difficult level or otherwise share courses with your friends, you’ll have to use Super Mario Maker 2 on the Switch.

Nintendo didn’t explain why it was winding things down. You can still play courses after the cutoff, but the game will clearly lose some value when you can’t share your creations with anyone else.

It’s not a surprising move, at least. The Wii U wasn’t nearly as successful as the Switch has been, and may have limited the audience for SMM even in the game’s 2015 heyday, let alone five years later. It might be costly for Nintendo to maintain servers for a game that isn’t getting much use, especially when many of those fans might have leapt to the Switch-based sequel.