Topic: Wii u save game management????

I was annoyed at launch there was no way to back up your game saves.

My Lego City undercover game got erased after having maybe 60 hours of gameplay. Such a painful day, I will probably never finish collecting stuff in that game now.

Apparently now now you can back up stuff to USB. This is not implemented well. For instance if I want to backup anything it backs up everything. If it's a game that has a patch the entire patch is backed up with the save data. If it's a downloaded game the entire game is backed up with the save data. This is annoying, an 8 gb flash drive should plenty big to backup saves, but it's not because you can't handle just the saves.

Furthemore all this backed up content is locked to the console. Want to bring your Mario save to a friends house and grab some star coins? Can't do it. If your console needs replacing, count on starting all your games over from scratch unless you happen to be able to get Nintendo to transfer your data.

Also, is it just me or do some games have a single save on the console while others have a separate save per user. It would be nice if I could transfer saves between users.

Why do I never see anyone complaining about this? Outside of a few console locked Wii saves this is the first time saves had such restrictions on a Nintendo console. If more people complained about this they would probably be more likely to address this in a system update.

I think any move to an account-based system would necessarily see a simultaneous resolution of this problem by necessity. For myself I'm content that I can at least back everything up to a second hard disk to avoid loss of save data and (more importantly) not having to waste time downloading all my games again.

I really don't get why there wasn't an account-based system at launch; I think Nintendo's fear of piracy got the better of them. The ability to sell a current Wii U owner another Wii U just because they like the look of a different-coloured shell should trump trying to stop people from messing with high score tables by swapping save files.

I remember, in the GameCube era I had my Wavebird, a small pouch for 10 discs and my memory card while visiting friends. It would have been very annoying, if we could not use my save games, because we wanted to use all characters in Smash Bros., Mario Kart and so on.

Today, I have a wife and kids and don't play every day with my friends, but I can see the big problem. Nintendo is still supporting the multiplayer games as before, but now one has to carry around the whole console to play with friends.