Topic: Pricing question 3DS eshop buying eshop money with CC

Hey there I have a question for 3ds users in UK what values do you have for choice when buying eshop cash with a credit card?
btw this thread can also be used for other countries so we can check out who pays the most for the same stuff

I believe it depends on where you live and the taxes and such. Especially for online purchases. Like me for example I live in California where they just started a law a few months ago to tax internet purchases where as before they didnt. So for me a $2.99 game was just that a $2.99. Now a $2.99 game is something like $3.21 after tax.

There is this thread that I started a few weeks ago that discusses some prices before tax that you can check out to see what there like but I think they are mostly US prices.

https://www.nintendolife.com/forums/3dsvc/gb_vc_eshop_prices

Us in the UK have the option of buying £10, £20 or £30 worth of Nintendo funds up to a maximum of £100, I absolutely despise the system.

I thought you were finally able to pay the exact amount you needed - are they really still making you buy blocks?

nah you still have to prepay to fill your online "wallet" then you can apply those funds to games. its like anti-duck says in NA as well. you can buy $5, $10, $20, or $50 i think.

Not wishing to send the thread OT too much but why haven't Ninty integrated all "shops" into one "shop", like the Playstation Store?

It doesn't make sense when you've got more than one model of Ninty console... I have Wii points that I could put towards the eShop or DSIware, and I'm sure I'm not the only one...

Short answer: because Nintendo sucks at the internet.

Long answer: for some strange reason (probably because Nintendo sucks at the internet and hasn't figured out what this whole "digital distribution" thing is) Nintendo decided to go for a console-based system rather than an account-based system. If you buy a game or add points, they are linked to the particular console they were bought on. There is no identification of the user (i.e. Nintendo doesn't know that Wheels2050 owns Bit.Trip BEAT - they only know that Wii Console #39874936 has had Bit.Trip BEAT purchased for it at some point).

As a result, each console has its own list of linked points and software that doesn't communicate with any other console (disregarding the DSi to 3DS transfer). Even though I know that I own a DSi and a Wii, Nintendo has no idea and as a result treats them as if they are owned by two different people - as a result, there is no sharing of points or re-downloading of games.

It's pretty ridiculous - if your Wii is stolen, say, all the software you have on it is lost to you. You'd have to buy it all again.

Nintendo needs to get its act together and realise that people want account-based downloadable software (or, even better, software with no Digital Rights Management at all, although that leaves it open to easy piracy and I can understand publishers not wanting to do that) so they can sign in to their account from any system and access their library of games. Steam on the PC is a fantastic and popular example of this. With a Steam account, you can log in from basically any computer in the world and download and play the games you've bought on the spot. For obvious reasons, you can only be signed in on one computer at a time.

Unfortunately I think it's too late to move to such a model for any of Nintendo's current consoles. Hopefully they shift towards it for the Wii U. I know I've held back on buying many games from their online stores due to my concerns about being to access them well into the future.

so...can we now purchase games using the exact amount needed or do we still need to add money in increments of $10, $20 etc?