[revjx]

The Nintendo Shop on the Wii U is reasonable, actually. It's fairly easy to use, discoverability is decent. It's pretty basic but it's (in my opinion) their best attempt yet.

Assuming they build on what they've learn from that, I'd hope the store for this system will be even better.

My most-wanted feature for the shop is for them to stop forcing me to buy the 'classics' on every bloody Nintendo system I buy! I must own Super Mario World 3 or 4 times by now.

(Obviously they're not actually forcing me, but it would be good to have cross-platform pass for that kind of content)

[TulliusCicero]

The Wii U shop isn't completely awful, but it's pretty bad. Both the 3DS and Wii U shops suffer from two major problems:

1. They're slow.

2. There are far too many screens/taps necessary to do things.

Loading each new screen seems to take at least a few seconds, and there are way too many of them. I'd estimate you could remove like half the screens in the 3DS shop purchase flow through better UX design. Just compare how long it takes to buy something on either system to how long it takes on Android or iOS.

edit: oh yeah and downloading takes large games takes a REALLY long time. I downloaded the new Sonic game for my 3DS the other day on the guest wifi at a Google office and it took like 3 or 4 hours. It definitely wasn't the wifi that was the constraining factor, speed testing on my phone showed it at like 200 mbps.

[knowaveragejoe]

Additionally the search is pretty bad. Just yesterday I searched for "smash bros" to buy some new characters, the actual game is deep in page 2 of the results after a bunch of developer videos and other tertiary stuff. Games, especially as popular as Smash, should be right at the top.

Also, filters for available DLC are nonexistent. You can't filter by maps, characters, or whatever applicable content types are available. All you can do is sort by "latest" and "most popular" for example.

[revjx]

You're right about the UI slowness. That is a problem for the system as a whole. When it was originally released, returning to the home screen (for example) was incredibly slow - it's marginally better since a system update, but woeful compared to the equivalent functionality on PS4 or Xbox.

[emsy]

Another weird thing: I have a 3DS and a 3DS XL but purchases can only be installed on 1 system. This is also a problem if your system breaks, because your games are tied to your console.

[OMGTehAwsome]

For eShop games you can call Nintendo and they can transfer the licenses (I did it when upgrading to a New 3DS.) For me the real bummer was that your saves are also tied to your console and it's more complicated transferring those. I don't mind paying 30-40$ for another game license, but it really hurt losing 100+ hours of progress in several unfinished games.

[n-gauge]

It's like their 'HTML5' browser (on either the wii or wiiu) so slow! The thing is the Wii U specs could have run at least some version of Chrome... I don't think it's hardware accelerated in anyway - prehaps to stop html5 games interfering with 3rd party games maybe?

[blakeyrat]

It has a bad UI.

But the real killer is: games are still tied to hardware, not user account. Which means, if your console dies, you lose all your purchases. (Unless that's changed VERY recently.)

If you're used to the Xbox store like the grandparent, going to the Nintendo Shop is like stepping back in time a decade.

[merb]

> But the real killer is: games are still tied to hardware, not user account.

that's wrong. only the game that is preinstalled on the console is tied to the hardware. which mostly happens on bundles.

[ap3]

>But the real killer is: games are still tied to hardware, not user account.

This seems crazy in this age of apps

[delecti]

I'm fairly confident you're incorrect. There's a single shared account between the 3DS and Wii U online stores, and I also know for sure that 3DS purchases are tied to your user account, rather than your hardware. I suppose it's possible that it works differently for the Wii U than the 3DS ecosystems, but that seems unlikely. You can still only have an account attached to a single console (of each type) at a time, but if you lose one or it dies, you can reattach your account to the new one.

[squeaky-clean]

Sorry, but that's the way it is. You do share the 3DS and Wii U accounts, but game titles are tied to the console. Nintendo has no instructions on how to transfer games to a different 3ds system without having both of them physically there and working [0]. I wanted to trade in my 3DS for a discount on a "New 3DS", but wouldn't have both systems to transfer my games. (Though I've read most Gamestop's will let you do the transfer in their store when you do the trade-in, I haven't tried).

It seems a Kotaku author was able to get their games transferred by contacting Nintendo directly. So at least there's that [1]. There's no direct way to download your games onto a new 3ds. And additional source about transferring between systems [2].

[0] http://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/a...

[1] http://kotaku.com/salvaging-games-from-a-broken-3ds-is-surpr...

[2] http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/154883/how-to-get-...

[merb]

> but game titles are tied to the console

they are not. you only need to contact Nintendo if your account is still TIED TO ANOTHER 3DS. However if it isn't you can just buy a new 3DS and selling the old one before you have the new one. If you've forgotten to detach your account your games are missing.

Here a german letter (I translated it) that I got from Nintendo before selling my 3DS (I wanted to sell the Games with the Account):

    Die Spiele, die Sie mit Ihrer NNID erworben haben, werden für den Nachbesitzer also nicht verfügbar sein, vielmehr sind die Lizenzen der Spiele
    mit Ihrer NNID verknüpft. 
    Spiele sind auch nicht zwischen NNID's übertragbar.

    Eventuell vorinstallierte Spiele (wie z.B. Mario Kart 7) sind mit der Seriennummer der Konsole verknüpft und werden für den Nachbesitzer wieder
    verfügbar sein, solange Sie vorher keinen Datentransfer auf eine andere Konsole aus der New Nintendo 3DS-Familie durchgeführt haben.

NNID = Nintendo ID. In short it says Licenses are connected with the Nintendo ID. Only Games that are pre-installed on the Console will be tied with the Console ID, if you didn't do any Datatransfer to another Device.

However I detached the ID and bough a 2DS later and I still can play all the Games on my NNID. Basically I only sold the 3DS + Cartridge Games.

[delecti]

Calling Nintendo to transfer your account in the event an old system becomes inaccessible is inconvenient, but not insurmountably so. It's good enough for me to consider games not tied to the console.

[hudell]

Your account is tied to the hardware (1 3DS and 1 Wii U). You can move your account from one hardware to another if you have both on the same room, or with a phone call.

[blakeyrat]

The ACCOUNT is shared. But the PURCHASES are not.

[Tiktaalik]

I am under the impression the lack of unified account system problem will finally be fixed with this new system. This is so long overdue and very welcome.

[vlunkr]

And the thing about the virtual console games is that after you've bought them 3 or 4 times from Nintendo, piracy starts to look real appealing.

[tiglionabbit]

The worst part of buying stuff on the Wii U shop is that you can't store it on a tiny SD card. You have to plug in a full external hard drive. This seems like a pretty obvious thing for them to fix in this iteration.

[ThatPlayer]

Don't forget that the WiiU also follows USB standards strictly and won't power a portable USB hard drive over a single USB port, requiring a Y-cable. Also you only get the option of formatting the entire drive to use for the WiiU.

[voltagex_]

I've heard you can't transfer games from console to console - no word on backwards compatibility yet but I must have some eShop titles from ages ago.

[ocdtrekkie]

I think that's a big part of why Nintendo still has purchases tied to devices. As a way to push people to buy the same content over again. They don't push out new digital content fast enough to keep the income flow up if they aren't getting you to repurchase things.