NeilShapiro

I bought an Advanced Wii U system because I figured I would download most of my software so as not to have a huge collection of CDs. I was even going to get an external HDD. Well, no, as it now appears I will download almost nothing because of a terrible rule in the Nintendo Store which probably already costs Nintendo customers thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars a year.

The rule is that software which you download can only be redownloaded to the same machine. OK, I can see they want to protect from one person giving copies to all their friends. But this is not the way to go.

Let's say that my Wii U decides to fall off the shelf and shatters on the floor. On it I had over $500 worth of games. Not hard to do at $59.95 a pop. With the Nintendo Store now I am out of luck. No way to get that software back. If I buy another Wii U I would have to start over and rebuy everything.

I called the Nintendo Tech Support. I expected they would tell me something along the lines of just call them and they would stop access to the data from the old serial number and allow the new machine to have access. Or, maybe some way to log onto the network and verify my identity via credit card or even faxing some ID to them. Uh, no.

The most they said they could do in such a case is to send them the machine and they would try to transfer the data if I bought a replacement machine directly from them. Leaving aside considerations of list price and super inconvenience -- the fact is that in many cases no one would be able to recover and transfer data.

I am flabbergasted. I may download a few cheap, Indie games but forget stuff like Epic Mickey and Assassin's Creed. Hardware breaks. The software on it should be recoverable. If it is not recoverable then you would be crazy to buy and to store anything on such hardware.

Is everyone upset by this or just me???