Frankly I'm just surprised thy haven't worked this out more. Having the Wii be tied to the hardware only was a simple if not disappointing limitation, and the 3DS let's you transfer to a different 3DS at any time. The Wii U's system of being tied non-transferably to both the hardware AND NID is outright stupid.
The sad part is even if they did the same as the 3DS on Wii U not many people buy a new console first to transfer. Either they sell the current console to buy the new. As not everyone is made of money, nor is it as easy to lug around all those cables. Imagine if say GameStop, GameCrazy, or whatever trade in store via your part of the world has, had to hook up everyones consoles to transfer data. There could actually be some good money in that. (Given enough people were trading in for another model). Companies could charge you a fee to transfer your data for you to a new console for say eight to fifteen USD. Because their using electricity from the store and it is on there employees time and labor. People would do it too, just to get that mark down on the next system or newer system model.
With all that said, Nintendo just needs to drop the account system all together & get out of DD services if they can't get it right. Bloody hell, even a console with no local accounts or identification means would be great. Then say it all worked via a single online account to download, but said downloads were not transferable. Making the only way to get said content again would be to relogin & download with your saves either cloud saved or backed up and transferable via flash memory. Maybe even throw in a DRM such as activated X ammount of consoles at said time with a deactivation tool via there website. Oh, but what am I saying, this is Nintendo where logical coding & micro-transactions for there users are thrown out the door.
Nintendo Employee: Sir I have a brilliant idea!
Satoru Iwata: Sounds great already, tell me what it is!
Nintendo Employee: Lets make it easy to transfer user accounts and change the other services to reflectsimilar changes. My proposal is....
Satoru Iwata: Stop right there!
Satoru Iwata: Give me your employee id you are fired! Security will be here in a moment to escort you out of the building. How dare you question my methods of milking the customers.
They totally have a purchase history, it's in the eshop options.
It'd be not good for them not to have a readable copy of that themselves linked to your account.
Let me rephrase what I said a little. I was saying, "If I recall correctly Nintendo does not store the purchase history on there end and the records are all store via the clients/users end". That said store data is then tracked via the store software granting local user account NNID-blah-blah-3255425 to what ever ftp to reobtain said files. Meaning when that one person purchased over 500USD/312GBP worth of games to lose them all Nintendo had no way to really look up the transaction history via there end.
Unless, I am mistaken and I am thinking of some other micro-transaction services doing this. Though, it would make perfect sense to why they can not compensate those whom lost all there data via the console. Not like Nintendo would be the first place to not keep records or even run a store properly with say SSL.