So in today's ND it was announced an update to 3DS is going to come soon that will allow 3DS owners to register their NNID - in fact they said it would be a requirement to use eShop just as it is on Wii U. Also will merge any balances you have in eShop if you have a Wii U and 3DS.

So this means we have a unified account.

NNID is now for ALL

eShop purchases (purchased shared on WiiU for all, but unique to 3DS as its a personal device)
MiiVerse interaction
more to come....

Now that 2013 will end Nintendo's seperated shopping experience. This also paves the way for games to be on both with one purchase. Especially VC.

I think that is the reason Wii U has seen no Gameboy VC yet. Nintendo was waiting to have eShops one in same then open VC to both systems. Meaning you buy on game and play on both systems!! This is the only way it makes sense.

Great addition and way to drive more sales. So glad I was able to buy WiiU at launch and snag "superchunk". :)

Hope this also means no more losing all your content if you lose your 3DS as the only next logical step is to remove the connection to a single device.

Yep this announcment was awesome! Do you know if the games are tied to the account? or we still have to wait for another update?

Well even on Wii U now games for all intents and purposes are tied to the account which is then tied to the console. However, I think this was  stop gap measure until they get the 3DS merged correctly to NNID.

I'm betting that next year we'll see further updates that truly show the games are tied to the account and if you have to replace your system the games can all be redownloaded simply by logging in.

I hope Nintendo also goes further to match what other digital content sellers do and allow you to effectively log into a few machines like 3 or 5 at a time and thus use your content on all of these.

This could mean I could have two Wii Us in house and share all content or easily replace a 3DS, etc.

Let's hope so! So far it's a good start then! Just the other day I wanted to buy a game on the Wii U but I had my credit on the 3DS xD.

I wonder why Nintendo waited so much for this though...

So if I already have games, will they become tied to my account now?

I'd think so. Its the only thing that makes sense. Its already only one eShop (you can trick wii u eshop to show 3ds games).

So now your 3DS is simply being tied to your NNID and thus those purchases should become part of you NNID history.

That's how it works on Wii U. The purhcases are part of your NNID account, but then tied to the console (for now).

Woohoo!!! Took them long enough :p

Still not good enough Nintendo, because reasons.

you can only connect it to one 3DS? ):