Nintendo's Implementation of Cross-Buy is Surprisingly Generous

Let's abuse the system and kill off cross buy

This behavior is the kind of stuff that keeps Nintendo from doing things like this or having open region systems. People act like they are so paranoid, but at the first chance people will take advantage.

This is most likely an unintentional side-effect of Nintendo's piss-poor profile system that will, I would imagine, be fixed with the incorporation of a full account-based system with whatever the hell comes after Club Nintendo is finally dead and buried.

This isn't "generous," it's a loophole, as noted. Putting up this article is a good way to rob the Ollie Ollie developers of sales, inspire abuse, and damage any future cross-buy releases unless or until Nintendo finally makes an appropriate account system.

Which means no more cross buy

This makes sense to me. If you buy a game that supports Cross-Buy then you should be able to use it on ALL the devices you own that can support/run the game, even if you have multiple of those devices.

Yeah, seems like a hell of an exploit. Nintendo should finally do a reliable profile system that makes sense. Also, speaking of cross-buy, I would really love to see something like cloud saves, where I can play OlliOlli on the go, and when I get back home, I can continue from the same spot on Wii U.

@Kirk it makes sense if u actually own all the systems but it will likely be used by people to give their friends 'free' copies of the game

Clearly unintentional, and it will end up helping several people in Nintendo who never favored Cross-Buy (and I suspect many of them are up in the hierarchy). I hope they fix it soon.

"Nintendo's Implementation of Cross-Buy is Surprisingly Generous"

Generous or incompetent? Time will tell.

"This doesn't work with other "Cross-Buy" games such as Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Tipping Stars"

Well, looks like either Nintendo is incompetent or Curve Digital is the one being generous, I see no reason to suspect Nintendo is being generous.

Still haven't purchased this game, 1 reason for the wait is we have 3 3DS in our home and I'm not sure who will be getting the game. If all 3 3DS would get it - which is what I thought when I read the title as I wasn't even aware OlliOlli was cross-buy - then I would be downloading the game to my Wii U now.

NNID accounts are console bounded to the Wii U, in other words if one of this persons owns a Wii U or plan to buy one they would have to mess with Nintendo Customer Support to have their account transfered to the other Wii U system.
Yeah, this is totaly posible but wouldn't bother with it for now, unless the other NNID users absolutely don't have any intention of getting a Wii U.

I'm not sure if this was intentional or not. On the one hand, multiple people can get a free copy of the game (technically also true with PSN), but on the other hand, I'm sure there are a lot of people who use whatever account is logged in on the Wii U to make a purchase, especially when kids are using their parents accounts. For those people this would make cross-buy easier/feasible.

It does seem harder to exploit than it first appears, too. I mean, you have to have your NNID on the Wii U, and you can only have your NNID on one Wii U (right?). In order to "give" your friends free copies, they'd have to have accounts set up on your Wii U connected to their 3DS's. As long as things are set up like that, they can't have that NNID on their own Wii U if they have one/get one, and they can only have their 3DS connected to one Wii U. A group of friends can't all share games. The most they could do is mooch off of one friend.

@oHOWEo lmao xD laughed way to hard on that one

I would imagine it would be used primarily to give free copies to friends with a 3DS, but no Wii U.

@foodmetaphors - While I think it's a mistake I'm not sure how you would give "all" your friends the game if they already own a Wii U. @TrueWiiMaster did a god job of explaining it while I was looking for this:

http://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2210/~/can-i-log-into-my-nintendo-network-id-on-a-different-system%3F

and this:

http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/linking-same-nintendo-id-on-second-wii-u.453586065/

Though 50m 3DS and 10m Wii U means we all know somebody w/ a 3DS but not a Wii U.

So, anybody know how many secondary sub-accounts a Wii U could have? Google can't find it. Can't be unlimited can it? I know my Wii U and PS3 both had 4, then a friend of my sons came over and added his account to their PS3 and they were able to find and play his LBP3 levels online. They're still too young and honest to share games though

So it doesn't work for Squids Odyssey and cross-discounts, huh.

This is why we can't have nice things.

How is this taking advantage? I'm sick of buying multiple copies of one game so my whole family can play. If this was retail we could just pass the copy around. I might get this game now if only because of this. I have 4 3ds systems in the house and it can get quite expensive to rebuy the same game. Besides if we had account systems we would all be able to do this anyways.

@Spoony_Tech There are ways to take advantage of it. If you only own a 3DS, you could register your NNID on a friend's Wii U who has the game and then download the game on your 3DS without paying, if I understand it correctly.

@hiptanaka I'm not sure of how it works but if I can dl this on my Wii U then get it on all 4 of my 3ds's then they just sold me a game I had little interest in. I was definitely not buying it more then once but if we can all play it then it's something to look into.

Fraud is fraud.

Nintendo's account system is still pretty messed up ... I think they would have done well to just copy Sony's approach + allowing for multiple accounts on the 3DS (in contrast to the Vita, which is really one of the systems' most egregious flaws in my book).

@Spoony_Tech Yeah, it's a given that you should be able to get it on all your 3DS systems, and this is probably Nintendo's way of making that happen. As a side effect of their particular solution, it's abusable.

@hiptanaka As is any account based system. If I owned a PS4 I could just let someone sign into my account on their Vita to play those cross over games. I'm not paying for Netflix but someone in my family is.

The funny thing is I know no one that owns a Wii U so it will be perfect for me.

Great, lets abuse it so it will never happen again....
Not the smartest article around here to be honest.

@foodmetaphors

Well; it should really all be tied into the one main account across your various systems (assuming this is actually sorted at this point), so you can only do it on machines you've registered with the same card and details etc, otherwise then it really is a bit stupid (on Nintendo's part).

Basically; I should be able to purchase the game and then have the option to play it on any and all the related Nintendo devices I own and have registered but I don't expect to be able to just let anyone with a Nintendo console also be able to use my version of the game on their device. If that's how Nintendo has it set up then you can really only blame Nintendo's incompetence here imo.

@MailOrderNinja how is this at all related to an open region system?

@Spoony_Tech The difference is, here you can promoto a different NNID to get the game for free, by registering it on the Wii U, so you wouldn't have to share an account. It's a bit far fetched and I don't think it will become a problem for Nintendo, but it's still an example of their online systems being a bit clumsy.

But I agree, it's good that they're generous about it.

This shouldn't have gotten an entire article in my opinion.

@Einherjar I will say it like I stated above, why should I have to buy one game multiple times in my household? I'm sick of buying the same game more then once so why should I. Because of this at least for me this game will get a sale. Otherwise I couldn't care less.

Yes lets let everyone know how to abuse cross-buy so that Nintendo will put a stop to cross-buy all together till they can figure out how to implement it with being abused, which won't be for a long time or never.

@Spoony_Tech Thats what cross buy is for, but not a guide to abuse this system.

Account system has so many flaws as it is, take it while you can, I hate having to buy a game twice.

@HeroOfCybertron It isn't really abusing the system if say you own a Wii U and say you own 3 3DS consoles I see nothing wrong with it being able to have the games on all the systems that you actually own. Sony's PS3 will let you do the same exact thing, even Microsoft's Xbox 360 will let you do it also.

@antdickens That's what I keep trying to say. You can't just unlink and link to a friend's system to get a game for free then link it back up to your Wii U. It's not that easy. This is actually more complicated then others are making it out to be.

And like I stated above, this game just got a sale from me because of this!

@Spoony_Tech @antdickens Wish there was a like button for posts.

@mowerdude It sounds like abusing the system to me since the article says "Register several NNID accounts on your Wii U console" so you can get the game free on several 3DSs.

@rjejr A Wii U can support up to 12 profiles, either with or without a Nintendo Network ID connected to it at any given time.

@rjejr
You can have up to twelve nnids on a single wii u so I read in Nintendo's website.

I would like to see such generosity on VC titles, but I don't want an indie developer to be discouraged by people saving a few (insert currency here).

@antdickens
Since you're working on Like-like buttons, I suggest/recommend a 1up button instead.

I'd like to point out the obvious if someone has said this I'm sorry. It's easy to take advantage of the Sony crossbuy as well, to a limit.

@HeroOfCybertron
You're forgetting how inconvenient it is to switch to a different Wii U.

still not good enough.

@UltraLaserTen @outburst-

12 huh, well thanks for that, more than I expected. Still means you can only give it out to 12 friends so it's not unlimited. Wonder what would happen if you deleted the account afterword from the Wii U if the game would still function on the corresponding 3DS? In that case I suppose you could just give it to unlimited friends by adding and deleting accounts for the Wii U. Too much work for me though, I'm cheap, but only when it's easy

Oh, and I second the 1Up button as long as it's a green mushroom. And I'm not embarrassed to say I own this shirt and wear it regularly:

@SetupDisk - I don't know how Sony's cross buy works as I only own 2 PS3, but I do know my kids and I can play online multiplayer Minecraft in 2 different rooms in the house w/ only 1 purchase. Not that I ever want to play, but my kid keeps asking me. And copying over all of our save points wasn't a problem either. (I know some games don't let you back up to USB thumbdrives but I don't think I own any of those.) I did look into buying a 2nd Wii U rather than a 2nd PS3 but the PS3 just seems more user friendly in that regard.

@rjejr

Sony's cross-buy is a breeze. Essentially, if you own the PS3, PS4, and/or Vita, and the game is available on more than one of these, regardless of which you buy it on, you can get it for the rest simply by going to the shop to download it.

For instance, Rogue Legacy was a PSN+ title last month, and I downloaded it on the Vita. If I go into the Playstation Store on the PS4, I can just download it there as it's already noted as part of my account. Even easier, on the PS4, if I go to my game library, it'll show games I've downloaded elsewhere (such as the Vita), and highlights them in my library with a download button reminding me that I can get the game on both pieces of hardware.

It's all tied to my account and doesn't have much room for abuse that I can see. I just may not know how to abuse it, but don't see why I'd want to bother--it's already really smooth.

This is Nintendo still being archaic in their thinking and understanding of all this stuff. They want you to buy Virtual Console games more than once (particularly for a game that was on Wii, Wii U, and 3DS), where on Sony, you'd automatically have access to all versions simply by downloading it once.

Sony, Apple, and Google Play are handling this with far more elegance.

IIRC you can download any game tied to your PSN account onto any Playstation when you've logged on.

So how does this work? I assumed you download it on your console of choice, then get given a code for the other one. I guess I was wrong?
I don't see a problem with it tbh, and if anything has only made me want to buy a copy - and I wasn't interested before.

@Quorthon - I think the abuse - at least on PS3 - was that people were sharing the game w/ everyone else who owned a PS3 by putting accounts on all theirs friends systems, so 1 person could buy it but a large number of people could play it. i think Sony cut it down to 3 other systems now but I sitll think 1 PS3 owner could buy a game and 2 of their PS3 owning friends could play it for free. I have never had another friend or family owner own a PS3 so I don't know how it works, only what 'm able to do w/ 2 PS3 in my own household, but I do suspect that "sharing" led Nintneod to shut it's systems down more.

As for straight up cross buy, everything locked to a NNID should be cross buy, especially 20 year old $6 and $8 VC games.

@rjejr From what the instructions on the shop says you must have the id's link before the dl to get it for free on the other systems. I don't think you can simply link the 3ds id's afterwards yo get it.

Anyways I went ahead and bought it. Already on 2 3ds systems and 2 more to go. Never would've got this game if not for this. My thanks to the powers that be that did this and the dev that deserves my money.

Well, it is not the first time that Nintendo has been (supposedly unwillingly) generous. Remember the "Gift and Hunt Together Promotion" that NOE had for Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate?

In that promotion you would be given a recommendation code for registering a copy of the game with Club Nintendo, and a friend could register a 3DS system and use the code to get their own digital copy of the game. Now if the friend had already set up his/her 3DS system with Club Nintendo upon activating the download code he/she would also be given a recommendation code, and thus free games would be given out indefinitely (as long as someone had unregistered 3DS systems). Now, that was abuse...

@Spoony_Tech - "you must have the id's link before the dl to get it for free on the other systems"

Well that seemingly innocuous little tidbit of information pretty much changes everything, doesn't it? How many accounts do people really have on their Wii U and how many are people going to add just for this game?

Maybe, just maybe, this was done on purpose? Though I still think it's more Curve Digital's doing than Ntinedo, or at least a compromise between the 2, Nitneod just doesn't give games away willy nilly.

Thanks for the clarification.

That's bad for the developer. And this should not be featured on the front page. The game is 8 dollars for crying out loud, and there's definitely a lot of hard work put into it.

@Cyberbotv2 This article doesn't say take your system over your friends house for a free game. Like I just said above the systems must be linked prior to the dl and you can't simply just go to someone's house and get the game for free.

I'm changing my screen name to common Sense is a lost art. These people the last couple of days geez!

@Shane904 You are correct, I apologize I'm not sure what I was thinking earlier. My main point is all the restrictions and things they do with their terrible account system and other decisions a lot of that is to prevent piracy and people taking advantage of things. People have been asking forever for Nintendo to do something like this and people immediately take advantage.

It's a case of few ruining it for many.

@Shane904 You are correct, I apologize I'm not sure what I was thinking earlier. My main point is all the restrictions and things they do with their terrible account system and other decisions a lot of that is to prevent piracy and people taking advantage of things. People have been asking forever for Nintendo to do something like this and people immediately take advantage.

It's a case of few ruining it for many.

@Dazza Squids Odyssey was actual cross-buy, not a discount.

@MadAdam81
And allowed is allowed. They're allowing people to do it, so it's not fraud. They have made no statement implying this was not their intentions.

@Quorthon
You can't really compare Apple's and Google's account system handling though. First of all, Nintendo's life blood is on games alone while the other two have various revenue sources. You can't really share your AppleID and Google account because you're screwed the moment you share your device to someone outside your family. Your email, social network accounts, cloud photos, etc are connected to your account so it discourages you to share your devices. If Nintendo allows you to login your account on multiple Wii Us and 3DSes, then I'm gonna share my account with my friends and possibly profiting from it. That's why I can understand Nintendo's stance on accounts tied to one Wii U and one 3DS only.

I'm not defending Nintendo however. They need to upgrade and fix their account system and let us download VC games on both systems without paying twice. I can also understand as why it's such a pain to move your account to another unit if it gets broken/lost/stolen because it can be again exploited, but that's for another round of explanation.

Edit
Anyway, I don't think it can all be fixed this gen. If they'll go with unified OS next gen, then it'll be easier for Nintendo.

@midnafanboy

"You bash this site,but you keep coming back.That's hilarious friendo."

lol

@MailOrderNinja uh, you do realize no one is to "blame" for this outside of Nintendo themselves. Hell, look at the updated quote from the developer themselves stating they were fully aware of the potential exploitation from the get go; that's on Nintendo and their ass backwards implementation of anything modern.

Talking about this, if I sign someone's 3DS NID in my Wii U and then erase it, THEN that person buys a Wii U, will that person be able to use that same NID on its own Wii U without any problem?

@outburst

Well, yes, you can compare to Apple and Google Play because they compare easily to Sony with how they handle accounts with PSN--and that is without unified Operating Systems, as the PS3, Vita, and PS4 are all very different beasts.

The whole point of comparison is selling the same products on multiple devices, and indeed, Nintendo can be totally be compared to them--as they are also selling numerous products on multiple devices. In that, Nintendo is falling well short.

Your assumptions about sharing your account willy-nilly come off as incredibly irresponsible. I may sign into my account or profile on my girlfriend's Xbox One, but we certainly aren't swapping games, and indeed, if her account was later signed into another Xbox One as default, then all her games would be deactivated on the old one. That's how an account works. That account is tied to your email address, perhaps your phone number, and your credit cards, and if Nintendo's was more robust, it'd also tie to your online profiles and things like Achievements. Even the best of friends have ruined someone else's games, if by no other reason than happenstance. You should be guarding that a little more closely.

Basically, if you gave your account to your friends, you would lose it for yourself. That's how it works. I can play (digital) games my girlfriend bought, but only on her Xbox One, and I'm pretty sure her account needs to be actively running at the time.

Frankly, this way of trying to screw over developers and get a bunch of copies of the game for free is another great way for Nintendo fans to tell 3rd parties to go to other platforms. It's bad enough that Nintendo fans already never want to support anything 3rd party (unless Mario or Link are shoe-horned in), but to gleefully look for ways to give them even less support?

We should be championing ways to better support third parties and indie developers, not looking for ways to screw them over. All we're going to do is devalue our Nintendo consoles faster than ever.

@rjejr

I'd actually never heard of this. My girlfriend and I pondered it at one point, but for Xbox as we both own our own X360. Ultimately, we didn't do it as we figured there were probably checks in place for those kind of shenanigans, and we didn't feel it was worth risking damaging our profiles in any way just so we could both have Comic Jumper or whatever we were considering.

I vastly prefer supporting developers anyway. People work hard on these for the most part, and they deserve to be paid for those efforts.

@Quorthon I have to wonder, doesn't the PSN store has some loopholes, or well, exploits that it allows to log in an account on another PS and download the title again?

At least here, cheapstakes exploit that as in people make accounts and buy the game one time. then sell the second download which is free for like 15-20$.

IIRC they can do this many times if they are cautious.
But I don't know exactly how its done. Just that some of the people at univ talk about getting games like this. And I dunno if it was already corrected.

@Gridatttack

I'm not really sure. I think that with the modern account systems MS and Sony have in place, that the games get deactivated if the profile isn't actively a part of it, which is why these companies (MS, Sony, Valve) have been looking into ways to trade or share games digitally.

My list of PSN friends is super short, so it's not like I have a lot of opportunity to test this stuff out. I think those loopholes are probably pretty well patched by everyone else. For instance, my PSN account is tied to my PS4, my Vita, and my PS3, so me putting my account on someone else's PS4 likely wouldn't accomplish anything in that regard.

I'm not even sure what to put in a Google search on this. The first thing I found was this complex little ditty for the Xbox One: http://forums.xbox.com/xbox_forums/xbox_support/f/27/t/1570412.aspx

Evidently, two PS3 consoles can share a single copy of a game, but there are lots of rules covering this, and you put your own account and use of the software in jeopardy if you do it willy-nilly. http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/38830/can-i-download-a-ps3-games-from-psn-on-my-own-system-and-then-download-the-same

I'm of the mindset that, if you were willing to jump through all these hoops for a game, you or your friend could just buy their own copy. I mean, if you like it that much, just support the damn developers. It's hard enough just to get noticed these days, and this kind of asinine penny-pinching is like kicking someone while they're down.

"We really like your game, and we're willing to go through labyrinthine rules to put it on two consoles, but we certainly don't want to give you the measly $10 you deserve for our enjoyment." That's a little mean.

I'm maybe the only one glad of this "exploit" so that I can abuse it in a legit way XD
I avoided this game cause the 3DS linked to my Wii U is NOT the 3DS where I would like to download the game, making the crossbuy a problem instead than the nice gift it is. Now I can buy the game and get a Wii U and a 3DS copy where I wanted
(Or at least I will do so happily if this won't change with future crossbuy titles, regarding OlliOlli my interest collapsed thanks to the great Europe update scheduled for tomorrow ^_^; ).

@Quorthon - "and they deserve to be paid for those efforts."

I think Notch just got paid $2,500,000,000.00 so I'm not too worried about him.

Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Tipping Stars is Nintendo's way of doing cross buy, this is Curve Digital's way. Besides that point, I think it's distasteful of NintendoLife to promote this kind of behaviour.

@rjejr

Yeah, that's Notch. Who struck gold. Even he worked his ass off on that game, spending years on it, and for as many people that love that game, he deserves that recognition.

However, I don't think it's fair to compare Notch's success to, say, the small indies who saw hope on the Wii U and got the shaft from the fans for their efforts. Or any indie who is stuck working a day job or two to support his game development efforts.

Mojang was indie, that's true, but their success is not even remotely the norm. This industry is only as strong as the fans who truly care about it.

No one here would go to work and be happy to not be paid for their time and effort. So why do so many expect that of game developers? It's sickening, and it's harmful.

@Wouwter : Agreed.

@oHOWEo Not really abuse though is it. I have a Wii U and two 3ds's and two NNIDs.

Sounds just about fair and will probably act to boost sales of the game on Wii U. Sony allow you to install on a set number of systems aswell.

This should be common place.

PLEASE TELL ME THE ACCOUNT DONT NEED TO BE REGISTERED ALREADY BEFORE YOU DOWNLOAD THE GAME! :{ I would love to have this olliolli on my brother's 3DS since mine is broken.

@Quorthon lol, please stop, I'm in stitches with the young Nintendo yes men...Returning to reality...this will only help increase sales of the title.

Win win for Nintendo, digital curve and the consumer.

@MasterBlaster Ha! Exposed by my own comment nice!

@Quorthon - Yeah I know Notch is the exception, not the rule, 2 in a billion (w/ Zuckerberg being the other 1, maybe 3 w/ Cuban) but I mentioned him b/c the only game I mentioned using cross buy on was Minecraft so I thought it fair to mention him by name.

Though to be fair to you this is my 8th post in this thread - wonder what the limit is? - so you may not have even read that particular one.

Man, some of you people are relentlessly negative, I bet you'd complain if you won a million dollars, tax-free. It almost makes one wonder why even bother playing Nintendo games if you seem to hate them so much.

@Retro_on_theGo I won't tell you but it would be a lie. At least that's what the eshop page says. I didn't take any chances and linked my son's up before hand.

@Spoony_Tech I don't blame you I'd do the same if I new about this before hand.

@antdickens

Like.

This is why Nintendo does transfer mechanisms instead of one account to play all games regardless of hardware. Digital stuff like this is always opened to abuse. Google, Apple and the rest also just live with the abuse. I remember downloading World of Goo (though the Wiiware version is the best...) on an Android tablet that didn't belong to me using my account used with my cellphone.. simply a free copy for my parents in law. When you want to throw out money like that, you don't tie software to hardware.

I kinda prefer the Tipping Stars way TBH. It gives you a code to give to your friends or yourself without any oddities or loopholes. This is especially great since Nintendo got rid of the gifting system for some reason.

@Quorthon PSN is quite open to abuse, or at least on PS3. My friend simply created a new user on my PS3, logged in with his PSN account, and downloaded all of the DLC packs for one of the CoD games on to my PS3, becoming usable across all of the accounts activated on the system. I believe you can only activate your account and do this on 2-3 systems though.

The trick is to have multiple friends' accounts activated on the system to get a bunch of stuff. I only used it for DLC packs though (all of them bought games physically).

Well that's strange that Nintendo didn't counter this somehow. I'm sure they will eventually, but it seems weird they didn't remedy this before release.

Wooh, thanks for the tip, this is great !