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

This is the best thing ever for under-privileged countries, you have no idea!

It's like, a revolution - but only if we have access to the American/European store. XBOX Marketplace here is ok, but has so few games, for example. Make it like steam, Nintendo... one world, one store.

I saw a thread on that once. I hope they do it like that but I doubt it.

You know that Steam can, for example, have a game in offer in the USA while in Europe the same game is still full price, do you. Or that you may not be able to play a game because, while it's in Steam and is has been released in some countries, it hasn't been launched in your country? 1 Store yes, but 1 world not so much.

OT: My biggest worry with this is storage. It's ok to use SD cards for the 3DS games, but WiiU will use custom discs with 25GB of capacity. Where a we going to download them?

I know that... but I can buy 99.9% of the games there with the same price as any american person with my international card. In Xbox Marketplace or PSN that's not possible, we get fewer (much fewer) options and much higher prices.

But I know Nintendo would never do this - I dont expect that much.

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.

If you want to be able to take the game to a friend's house and play it on their console, then just buy the retail version. Companies will always have limits on digital copies to try and prevent abuse. It sucks, but that's the way it is.

I will be sticking with retail games.

to an external HD maybe?...

 OT:  In my case I will still buy hard copies of my games, at least for all nintendo games, digital is fine though, and if the price is right I'll buy most 3rd party games thru the eshop.

It's been confirmed that the system can use USB HDDs as well as SD cards.