New Hardware Models Highlight Nintendo's No-Transfer Policy

An article at Wired discusses the difficulties involved in transferring games that were purchased and downloaded online when users replace their Wii or DSi. "Neither the Wii nor Nintendo’s portable DSi consoles have an upgrade path for downloadable content, since games are tied not to user accounts but to specific machines. It’s impossible for a user to copy content from an old console to a new one. Even some Wii owners whose machines have malfunctioned said it was difficult, or impossible, to get Nintendo to transfer the software licenses at its headquarters." One gamer, who bought the recently released black Wii console, explained that she got Nintendo to transfer her games, but needed to "mail both of her Wii consoles to Nintendo, and wait two weeks," hardly a convenient solution.

Comments

Backups on the DSi

[Mornedhel]

The not so funny thing is, you can back up your downloaded DSiWare games to the SD slot, but you can't restore them to just any DSi, they're tied to the one you downloaded them from.

About the only use I can see for this is if you have bought a lot of DSiWare and want to free some of the internal storage. Even then, since you can re-download them as many times as you want (still on the same console), it's not very useful.

This is why I will never own a console

[Anonymous Coward]

With all three game console makers treating their customers like dogshit, there is no way I am going to bother with a console.

Microsoft bans people if they think their console is modded.

Nintendo calls piracy a "crisis" and appears jacks their paying customers around.

Sony puts out ROM patches to disable functionality and allow ninja-updates.

Hell with them all. Maybe someone can make an indie console that doesn't suck, get some non-name brand game makers and go to town. I don't know if an open console would sell, but I wonder these days.

Re:This is why I will never own a console

[radish]

Microsoft bans people if they think their console is modded

No, Microsoft bans _consoles_ which are modded, not users. Those consoles can still be used offline and you can still login to a new console with your account and play online. Modded consoles are often used by people to cheat at games (and thus spoil the experience for other players). IMHO it's perfectly reasonable for them to prevent you from spoiling the service which other people pay for, and as someone who doesn't mod his console I welcome their attempts to limit cheating which have ruined so many online PC games.

Link accounts

[Anonymous Coward]

Just link your shop account with your Nintendo.com account and you can re download anything. Simple as that. It's an ounce of prevention. NEXT.

Re:Digital Distribution is the wave of the future.

[Ragnarok89]

I couldn't have said it better myself. That's why the most recent games I play are almost a decade old. I can play them when, how, and where I want. Period. No way in hell am I going to pay some company to tell me how I can play their game.

Re:Bad Policy

[radish]

Well Microsoft have managed to figure it out. You can use their website to transfer DLC licenses from one machine to another, I assume it just invalidates the original licenses and pushes that invalidation down to the old console next time it connects but I don't know for sure. Works fine though, I've done it a couple of times.