Topic: Thinking about going mostly digital on wii u.

I have gone all digital. The big advantage you have is off TV play. I can access any game, anywhere in my house (I am fortunate that I get good gamepad reception in most rooms).

@shingi_70
Yes I can. I just did, Xbox 360 has a gamertag that can't even let me redeem my Xbox 360 games on Xbox One. The account system IS part of the key to BC. Nintendo sucks with their account system, but Microsoft and Sony suck at supporting other stuff, period. That's just how it is.

Also, you CAN move your NNID from 3DS to another 3DS by unlinking it beforehand. That's the account system, dude. Even if you have to call Nintendo for help or something, it is still there, and that's besides if you didn't unlink it beforehand like you supposed to. Saying otherwise is ignorant, which is fact.

But that's a hardware issue, not one with the underlying account system. Your achievements for said older games all still transfer over no, also lets be honest the people who care about BC are in minority since people don't seem to care about it at all.

That's not a proper account system, even if you unlink the account its only for the miiverse part of the system., you still need to contact Nintendo if you want to transfer your games from one system to another in case of theft or breaking. That seems unacceptable in todays technical climate. My phone broke a few months ago and when the replacement came I just typed in my google account and boom, everything flooded onto my new device within minutes.

I would like to say that I have really bad judgment when selling games. Regret selling Mario kart 8, regret selling 3d world. Digital would prevent me from doing this which is good for me.

A big advantage of digital is there are a few games that are either out of print or hard to find like Pikmin 3, The Wonderful 101, and Wii Sports club.

@shingi_70
I understand. My original point was that Sony and Microsoft fall short in other areas, outside of account systems that Nintendo excels at, so it either makes sense to criticise it all together, or not at all. My point included: Move, BC, PS camera, PS Vita(dual screen for PS4), and a bit of Kinect. Sony also gets hacked and Xbox Live is a bit more expensive. If we want to criticise Nintendo for not having a better account system, then we have to criticise all of those other things for Sony and Microsoft.

And to be honest aside from the monthly "free games" ps plus and xbox live isn't worth paying for, they are constantly getting hacked and just recently a bunch of people got their passwords revealed. So even though it costs money there is little to no security. They have real account systems yes but at this point I trust to buy games from the eshop much more now.

Well you get better service reliability and cloud saves which I count as being worth paying for. Plus Nintendo doesn't get Ddosed because people aren't exactly using their online for gamelay or commerce as Live or Psn. Ignoring live hasn't been hacked that often and Microsoft underlying service is pretty reliable (Azure is well used in the tech space), from a hackers point of view Microsoft/sony just does much more.

Also i'm unsure what that would do for trust issues, I mean Microsoft didn't take the same type of hit from lizard squad that psn did, and even so if you just use points cards nothing to worry about.

Sadly, not having to get up and change the disk is a pretty big deal for me..... I seem to play digital games more. BUT, I have a bit of collector tendencies and like to have the physical proof, not to mention- I move my Wii U around and even tho HDs are small and portable, this is just one more thing to lug around.

That's not true. The features NNID DOES offer are still on par with Xbox Live and PSN, except for Smash Bros. I can play CoD Black Ops II or whatever else just as good on Wii U as any of the other platforms. Smash Bros. is basically the only game that doesn't always work well online, and that's only because lots of peoples' router or internet sucks. Miiverse isn't coming from nowhere, either.

Nintendo could offer more services, but it's more about money than the capability. Basically any device can use cloud.

Nintendo has never been hacked to the point that Microsoft and Sony have. When Sony got hacked in 2011, Nintendo got hit by the same hack, and they just shrugged it off while Sony had to shut down PSN and some people lost tons of money.

Actually this rings true for me; I think half the Wii games I own are the second or third copies of titles I bought sold and then reconsidered. I've only made a couple of "mistakes" in download purchases - I'm a lot choosier about making the big retail purchases.

Regarding price it can be true, but in the release window I've not had any issues matching disc price using codes from GAME or due to other promotions. There is some risk of data loss, but given the fact you need to be online to get updates for disc-based releases I'm not sure that's all that relevant now.

I do think a second hard drive for backups is a must, though because if you have as many titles as I do the idea of spending days to re-download after a drive failure (not to mention loss of save data) isn't a palatable one. I use a mains-powered desktop drive as the primary and a portable with a y-cable as my backup. It would be nice if the Wii U had a proper backup utility to track changes; as it is I have a note of what is currently backed up and just add new games and whatever I'm currently playing to the monthly update. The lack of separation of game/save data can make this a lengthier process, but I'm happy with the trade off.

Well by features I also include Cloud Saves, streaming to Twitch, and basic things such as Cross game chat.

@shingi_70
I include those features, as well. Even though I don't use those features all that often, I understand that they are there, and that they matter. I personally don't care for Twitch or cloud saves all that much, and voice chat mainly goes unused by me.

The value between a paid and free service is ultimately the real discussion here. You can't compare them to the point where one is straight up better, because there's a $60 difference. Even if we were to compare the services, Nintendo is still offering more for free than Xbox Live or PSN, which are things like Miiverse, eShop discounts, free online gaming.
I don't think you even realize how many people would probably drop Wii U altogether if they had to pay to play games like Mario Kart 8 online. People don't want to pay for that s***, period. If that means I miss out on system wide voice chat or things like Twitch and cloud, which I hardly ever use anyway, then at least I can do all the other stuff for free. That's how Nintendo Network is still valuable, while missing features that paid services like Xbox Live and PSN offer.

I wouldn't drop the Wii U altogether but Free Online is a BIG reason why I haven't gotten a Xbone or PS4.

@DefHalen
I'd be f***ing ticked off if Nintendo Network was a paid service, but by the time it was, you can bet your a$$ we'd have Twitch and stuff, which is the point I'm trying to make.

Yea I agree with that. If the Nintendo Network was a paid service it would have more features. One of those catch 22s of a Free Service compared to a Paid Service

Exactly. They could charge like $15 or something for Twitch, system wide voice chat, and cloud for a year, but they need to keep the free services they currently have as free, like playing online, discounts, and Miiverse. EDIT: This is just an example. I personally don't think anyone should be charging for system wide chat. Charging for Twitch and cloud makes more sense, especially if you already get like 512mb of cloud saves for free or something. There's tons of ways it can work.

I don't think Nintendo will do that anyway. They're much more likely to try and get those services to be free like how PS3 was, which is why it's a shame that PS4 is paid now. Free online and bluray are the biggest reasons why I chose PS3 over Xbox 360, last gen, but now Xbox One and PS4 both have bluray and paid online.

Going all digital in a console with no account system is a bad idea, I have been forced to do that with my 3DS due to Nintendo´s other anti-consumer policy (region lock) but I live in fear of losing hundreds in games.. plus why people are talking like Nintendo offers great discounts for free, I´m not sure about xbox, but PSN sales blow Nintendo out of the water even without factoring the extra discount given to PS+ subscribers..... Other than Atlus sales and sometimes CApcom´s you never see any decent sales on the Eshop,,, Really one reason I don´t own more 3DS games is the lack of attractive sales... Nintendo idea of a sale is discounting 60 cents out of the already overpriced VC titles and they call that the super smashing sale

When it comes to going all digital, I always think long-term. For example, what's gonna happen, say, 10 years from now and the servers for whatever system are long gone? Which games will still work when online is now longer supported? And what if a freak accident happens and the console is bricked or otherwise ruined/stops working?

All the $60 games I paid for, amounting to hundreds of dollars, gone. That's why I buy physical whenever possible.

They do have an account system