NSMB2, WiiU mark the birth of downloadable retail games on Nintendo consoles

[Rainbird]

Mr Khan said:

Rainbird said:

NintendoPie said:

Rainbird said:
I like the way Nintendo are doing it with retail involvement, which means there will be more competition. But why in the world would they bind the games to one console? It's like buying a game, but packaged inside an online pass.

Rol just explained it to you. Just like other companies Nintendo wants as much money as possible.

I'll rephrase then. It was stupid when they did it on the Wii and it will be stupid when they do it here.

The problem with the Wii was that there was no account system  period. It seems that the Nintendo Network will fix that, at which point i would have no problem if the game was "bound" to one console so long as i could painlessly "unbind" it and strap it to another console in the event of damage to the first, which would be a fairly easy process to manage by forcing a network logon to play downloaded games, and the logon could then detect that you're playing the game on the improper device and bar access to it.

This assuming that the Nintendo Network will have logons going forward. It could very well be possible that they'll do it exactly as they did on Wii and continue to do on 3DS (though in 3DS case they have a mechanism for "account" transfer)

If it's simply a matter of being logged in with the correct account, then I agree it wouldn't be so bad. But I'm not sure that's the case, at least when I read it from Nintendo's investor briefing: 

"The digitally downloaded software will be stored in the consumer’s SD memory card and be playable only with the hardware to which it was downloaded so that, unlike how you can share the packaged software which are stored in game card format, the consumer cannot share the software with other Nintendo 3DS systems owned by other members of the family or friends."

That's only in regard to the 3DS of course, so time will tell if the same goes for the WiiU.