Topic: Wii U Newbie Question

I'm new to the Wii U. I just got the lastest version. My buddy has like 30 games he bought from Walmart. Probably a dumb question, but can I download his games onto my system if he already downloaded them to his? Also, anyone know the cheapest external hard drive I can get that is comparable with the Wii U? Thanks!

I just read on other forums I can only download games onto my Wii U online and not from the disks. Is this right? If it I can't do it from the disks, what about downloading his games onto an external hard drive and then uploading them onto my system. Is this possible?

@gomwelder Does he still want his games? If he doesn't then you could contact Nintendo and ask them to transfer his NNID to your console.

But you can't both have access to the games. Obviously. If you could, then we'd all be sharing one person's games, Nintendo wouldn't sell anything, and it would be goodnight Vienna to the whole shaboodle.

Digital game purchases are tied to an NNID. You can only link an NNID to one console at a time.

If the games are on disc, there is nothing to download, except updates to the disc game. A disc game is run from the disc itself.

I'm not a 100% sure, but this might actually work.
But you might not need to download them to an external drive first. Just let your friend log in to his account on your Wii U and then download the games from the eshop with his account.

I'm only saying this because when I set up a second account (for another region) on my Wii U, I could still play the games from the first account on the second account. And of course, whenever I unplug the flash drive from my Wii U, those games installed on it vanish from the menu.

But remember, this will only work with games that were bought digitally, not from Walmart or other retailers. Also, since this would be file-sharing otherwise, make sure that he doesn't use them on his own Wii U anymore.

For your other question: Usually any drive should work, but I'd advise against a hard-drive since they're pretty sensitive and would suggest buying a USB flash drive instead. And make sure that it has enough memory, at the very least 64GB, but that should be the absolute minimum. If you want to get all the good games, even 128GB won't be enough - I just recently had to upgrade to a 256GB flash drive to be able to install all the games I've ever purchased.

@shani You can't just 'log in' to any account you want. Once you've linked your NNID to a Wii U, the only way you can use the same NNID on another Wii U is by system transfer or getting help from Nintendo.

@gcunit Oh okay, I didn't know that (never had to do that myself), in that case my assumption was wrong.