Topic: Thinking about going mostly digital on wii u.

But same thing can happen to your physical discs. What if someone steps on your disc. It is gone and you have to go to ebay to buy a new one. If my digital version stops working then I will go to eBay and get physical, when/if I can. Any negative digital might have physical has almost the same problem, maybe just in a different way

@DualWielding
It depends. Wii U has games Xbox One doesn't have, and vice versa. I bought 7 games on sale for Wii U, that aren't even on Xbox One. Games with Gold on Xbox One is basically exactly the same as PS+ on PS4, right down to the deals. If Watch Dogs is on sale on Xbox One, PS4 will most likely have the same deal. I've never seen otherwise, besides deals on PS3 and Xbox 360, but I'm talking specifically 8th gen. There's also the exclusives. Titanfall is almost always on sale for Xbox One.

But that's the thing, you CAN just buy another physical disk if one breaks. But if games become fully digital, which most seem to suggest, then you're screwed whenever companies move on to the next thing and the inevitable happens.

If things go fully Digital then the way things are handled have to change. With Steam users are able to download any previously purchased game even if that game is no longer available in the store. Same thing would have to occur for consoles.

The danger of losing your purchases is often overstated. Nintendo uses a convoluted user system, but anyone with access to a phone and mail service won't lose purchases on a currently supported platform. Maybe a decade from now it will be harder to get them back if you lose your data. Maybe you can still lose your save data, but that's not a problem exclusive to downloaded titles. It's also very possible Nintendo will upgrade their infrastructure to diminish or eliminate these issues, but that is uncertain, so I understand a position of cautiousness.

I have downloaded every Wii U title I own through the eShop and have yet to have any serious problems. The only two issues I see being very influential are cost and sharing. eShop titles are not discounted as often as physical offerings, which can even be bought and sold used. That has up to now been (very) slightly alleviated by the Deluxe Digital Promotion, and I am happy and capable of paying in such a way that Nintendo receives more of my money, rather than another entity that does not ultimately produce what I want. But cost is definitely an important consideration.

Sharing games is something that has impacted me though. I bought the Wii U on release day, expecting Pikmin 3 to be released shortly after. At the time I was the only person I knew with one and lived with my parents and sister. Now I have two friends with one, and my parents and sister would both like to buy their own. The problem is all those people came to me expecting that I'd be capable of letting them borrow my games, and I can't because I downloaded all of them.

Ultimately though, I'm still more happy having downloaded them. It's much easier taking my console with all my games to another place (I own 9 digital games that were also released at retail), even with the external hard drive. And switching between titles is very easy and intuitive. I can trust people to operate the console more than I could in the past. I used to not let anyone touch my discs, and now I can let people like my little cousin do it himself. Many people have damaged or lost my discs and/or cases in the past (usually drunk, irresponsible, and/or young people).

The advantages are even stronger on a mobile platform like the 3DS, but I've purchased a number of physical copies of games on that platform in order to share them with my sister.

I typically only buy digital when there is a sale, or its an online only or MMO game like Destiny or The Division.

@Tainy
I agree, both sides have their advantages and disadvantages. There is no one side that is more right than the other. Both are perfectly fine ways to purchase and enjoy games.

It already works that way. I have Teris Axis on my 3DS, which is no longer available in the eShop. I will still always have access to it, as long as Nintendo Network is up and running.

Nintendo Network is a lot more complex than Nintendo Wi-Fi was, so they can't just get rid of it like that. It's a base service that can communicate with a lot of devices at once. Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection was strictly for online play. Nintendo Network brings all those services together and expands them similarly to Xbox Live and PSN. The only real differences are the services they provide and whether you pay for them, otherwise the base service is practically the same.

Even the Wii Shop is still running, and it will be live until who knows. The servers for playing games online and the servers for the online store are different, and the Wii Shop is still probably using the Nintendo Network, even though they haven't said anything about this.

EDIT: It's kind of like DSi. The DSi Ware games are on the 3DS eShop, too, so you are still accessing the same servers DSi is on 3DS to get those games, because they are compatible on 3DS.

^ I do hope they combine the Wii Shop and Wii U eShop at some point, even if they have to leave Wii VC behind and just move forward with Wii U VC.

I don't understand this attitude that it's an investment of some kind with reference to the future. It's entertainment, it's ephemera. How many of these games are likely to be replayed? Enjoy them now and stop worrying about the future which will unfold in ways you cannot predict and which you cannot control.

Absolutely, loads of CDs from the mid-80s have popped their clogs because of the same reasons that DVDs die: poor quality control in manufacturing. If there's even one atom of oxygen that gets trapped between the polycarbonate layers eventually the metallic substrate will oxidise - it's a fact of life. Nothing is forever, so just enjoy and stop obsessing about "future-proofing" your collection. The closest you'll get is digital with backups and your console will die a death in time too.

Hell how can you ensure you'll physically be capable of playing the damn things after you retire? You got arthritis and reflexes slow with age - no way around that either.

Like @DefHalen has said, as well, is that as things move more into the digital space, the type of support they offer is going to have to change to make more sense to meet their business requirements. If people buy more digital games, they are that much more likely to support things like cloud, streaming, etc. benefits that digital files can offer that do not currently exist.

It's not like games from your account being left behind from generation to generation is anything new. Xbox 360 and PS3 games are still basically stuck in last generation, while Nintendo was able to transfer games from Wii to Wii U, because there wasn't an account system and they kept the same system architecture. It is not as black and white as people make it out to be.

I made an impulse decision to buy Trine 2 tonight in the sale, but couldn't because I don't currently have enough space for the download. Why the hell can't I complete the purchase and just download at a later time?

Just delete something unimportant like the YouTube App or something.

I'm aware of what I can do to resolve it, but it seems like an unnecessary block to my consumer impulses. Do they want my money or not? I've already been through the process of deleting unwanteds, so I need to be sorting myself out some external storage. Just seems daft that I can't make any more purchases until I've done that. I'd have thought eshop thrived on impulse purchases.

Some people might not know that they need an external HDD. Just imagine if you didn't know you needed an external HDD, then you find that out after you bought a bunch of stuff. You would be pretty ticked off, because they didn't tell you to the point where you need space for it immediately, and they will refuse any sort of refund.

YOU know that you can expand your storage with an external HDD, and were planning to buy while knowing it would be impossible to store it, for the time being, but this is a precaution for people who possibly may not know.

You make a decent point, apart from the easy solution to that, and that doesn't block the sale, is to have an extra step in the purchase confirmation when storage is lacking, explicitly warning that "there is insufficient space to download this software at this time. You will need to delete data or add extra storage before you can download and use this software. Do you wish to proceed with the purchase anyway?"

Ya, but it's still easier to require space, beforehand, instead of saying that. If someone is impulse buying stuff, they could possibly not even bother reading anything, so it forces people to know that they need more space; whether that be deleting other stuff, or getting an external HDD hooked up.

They can't guarantee that you know you need more space to download games, even with a message like that, because then you probably would have had enough space to download the software you want to buy, in the first place.

It would equally not make sense to try and and transfer a 16GB file to a 8GB memory device, knowingly.

Does anyone here have a Sonic Generations 3ds Download Code?

You'll have better luck with your question on the trading thread: https://www.nintendolife.com/forums/general_discussion/the_new...