Topic: Thinking about going mostly digital on wii u.

The wii u loves to roar when there is a disk in and I prefer a mostly silent machine. Plus I can just download off the eshop rather than going to gamestop and I can switch games on the fly. What is one BIG con doing this before I start going down this route? I already bought smash bros digitally 2 days ago.

You could lose everything,meaning for some strange reason all your games and memory can delete.And all the money you wasted on the games can be gone,but that doesn't happen all the time,so you're good.

I still have my downloadded games from 2006. Nine years later and nothing has gone wrong. One game corrupted but I deleted it and redownlloaded it no problem.

You can re download your games if your hd dies out....

They have a digital deluxe special that ends on the 31st.... $5 credit for every $50 you spend, so it might serve you well to buy a game or two now.

everything is sadly tied to the console,not the nnid. console dies you are done...that ext drive wont work with a replacement wii u. at least thats what ive been informed of. feel free to correct me if im wrong.

The only downside I can think of is the fact that NNID are tied to the system. So in the extremely unlikely event that your system stopped working (and it is extremely unlikely, Nintendo consoles are built to last a lifetime) you'd have to contact Nintendo to get your NNID released from the system and tied to the replacement. Fortunately major strides have been taken in the last year to where this process can be done without sending your hardware in to be serviced, but it is still something that should be taken into consideration.

Other than that, eShop purchases tend to be more expensive than retail. But, you get what you pay for I suppose, and while it may be more expensive you get the added convenience of never having to change discs.

this is exactly why I went all digital! I used the sales as well as the Digital Download Promotion for massive savings (43% overall) and an awesome collection of games at my fingertips! Also, don't forget the number of Club Nintendo points you will accumulate for possible free VC titles!

Now that it's much easier to transfer your NNID if your system ever does brick or get stolen or whatever, the only real cons left are money.

1) Games on eShop are typically more expensive due to lack of sales and Nintendo's reluctance to drop prices after launch.
2) If you decide you don't want a game, you cannot sell or trade it in. You can delete it from your HDD, but you're stuck with the purchase forever.

Other than that, the system is quieter, it's less shelf space, and it's more convenient.

when did It become easier to transfer your NNID and content? I thought you had to still had to call Nintendo which is far from easy.

Calling Nintendo is pretty damn easy, if you ask me. It's still a step up from actually being screwed out of your s***, which actually was happening until NNIDs became a thing, basically. People just don't know.

Still its pretty tone deaf and frustrating when there's proper account management on my Xbox 360 for example. I know the process is way easier than it was just a year ago, but it still doesn't make sense in the internet age.

I said easier, not easy. It's still not ideal, but it really isn't the death sentence it was even 2 years ago.

Still, if Xbox is anything like Playstation, you have to deactivate your ID on one console before activating it on another. That means if the first system is stolen or destroyed, you would still need to call Sony/Microsoft anyway to have them deactivate your ID. What Nintendo is really lacking is a download list. When I had to replace my PS3, I could just go in my history and redownload everything from there. If I had to replace my Wii U, I would need to go to the eShop and redownload everything one by one, a major pain in the ass.

If you have your original machine and the new machine, there's the system transfer utility nowadays.

The hard drive is formatted for a specific system, but the games are tied to the NNID. So the real "danger" on the Wii U is the storage of the save files, not the game purchases.

Price is the primary CON, shops generally sell at better prices than the shop. On the other hand you have ease of use (maybe not if you have a slow internet connection for the bigger downloads) and protection against loss as the major PROs.

You can't resell your games, and you never know what will be pricey and what won't. Super Smash Bros Melee, the highest-selling Gamecube game, consistently goes on ebay for over $50. That price will only go up as disks continue to die out. And that's just one game.

I'd rather keep my games having the ability to be sold to collectors 50 years from now, in case if a rainy day comes by and I need the money or I die and my kids can sell them for serious cash.

Agree with others.

In the short term, the biggest disadvantage is price. Buying retail is almost always cheaper if you shop sales aggressively, and the difference in cost can be significant over time. You also don't have the ability to share games with others (they are locked on your console) or to sell anything you have finished or don't want any longer to recoup costs.

In the long term, there is risk about losing your content - if the service is ever shut down for good then you will lose the ability to re-download your content so you might want to consider making backups, but that's a long ways off and nobody knows for sure if it will happen.

There are benefits and drawbacks to either side. My preference is clearly for physical when possible, but that's not the way the industry (or popular opinion) is going.

This is an issue for some retail games as well. Pikmin 3, MK8, Smash U will suffer when DLC and updates can't be downloaded anymore.

I could never go fully digital on a home console. I love seeing all my cases lined up next to each other on a shelf. I could go full digital on my 3DS though, don't have to worry about carrying around games.

@shingi_70
These type of hic-ups happen all the time, regardless of company. Sony is basically wasting the PS Camera and Move, or PS Now being a f***ing rip-off. Or we could complain about how Xbox One doesn't have BC. It's all part of the same type of issue. B****ing about one thing or the other is going to open a whole can of worms, especially if it makes you biased in any which way.

@Spookymeths

On the Xbox you can have your content on as many consoles as possible as long as your Gametag is signed in. You have one home console which can be changed three times a year and that just means you can share your games and downloads with other gamertags on the console. There's even device management on the Xbox website in settings.

@SCAR392

You can't equate the two at all. I mean even if you wanted to citing BC isn't equitable because it isn't an industry standard anymore, and nine times out of 10 due to switch of X86 and cloud computing were going to see Nintendo have the same problem once they eventually switch from power PC.

Also a proper account system that is literally on ios, Windows, PSN, Android, and every other product eco system isn't part of the issue. Nintendo is an outlier and its ******* crazy that people attempt to defend this. The fact that I can't buy another DS fmily system and download my content onto is astounding, even if you set a device limit like most of these other services do.