NO WAY to transfer my VC games to new console? REALLY?

[Leo1]

Sounds like some of the complaints in this thread should be addressed with the WiiU. Downloads will be tied to user accounts, not consoles.

http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/01/27/157248/iwata-confirms-nintendo-network-new-wii-u-controller-functions?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed

[Adamant1]

Also, your Wii downloads can most certainly be moved. Nintendo has a replacement program where you send in your faulty console and get it repaired/replaced for free if you're still under warranty, or for a lower cost than a new system costs if you're not. I the system is replaced, all your purchased licenses will be transferred.

Says so right there on their website, and contacting customer service would've given you the same information. How come you didn't try that?

[Leo1]

The complaint is that Nintendo hasn't provided a way for the user to transfer their licenses. Paul, like many people, would rather buy new when their system starts encountering trouble than getting a replacement system that has been repaired by Nintendo (Which you often have to pay a significant bit of change to do when out of warranty which swings the equation even more to new). Who knows what issues it may have or how it has been treated if he were to go for a repaired unit.

For instance, my fairly young 360 had a RROD years ago. The system's disc drive was in pristine shape that I sent in and I just had bought a 120 gig HD to upgrade it with and to play games off the HD when the RROD hit. The repaired unit from their replacement pool comes along and I started installing games and enjoying things just fine playing games off the hard drive. I noticed one or two installs failing but didn't think much about it (A failure on occasion when transferring 7 gigs or so of data didn't seem terribly strange) and restarting the process always worked so I didn't give it a second thought.

Then a couple of months later, I popped in a Xbox disc. It didn't take long playing a game directly from a disc before I realized this disc drive was in extremely poor shape and having serious issues correctly reading disc. That left me up the creek without a paddle since my system warranty was up other than for RROD and E74 errors and more than 30 days had gone buy since receipt of the repaired unit.

You avoid those unknowns if you're willing to spring for a new unit to replace one that is failing. And Nintendo doesn't provide a consumer wanting to do that with a way to transfer their WiiWare and Virtual Console games to the replacement.

That's the issue this thread is dealing with.

[Adamant1]

I agree it's not an ideal solution (and it seems they realized that, being as they're going by a more sensible one with the Wii U), but the thread has so far mostly claimed there's no such download-saving process at all and your purchases are doomed, and that's... well, not true.

[Paul C]

Just an update to let everyone know that I contacted Nintendo about this issue and got an immediate response from someone by email asking me to please call them as soon as possible to discuss the matter, which gave me some hope.  Unfortunately they explained to me that they have no way of transferring the games to a new system, but offered to repair my old system for half price.  They also broke some interesting news to me that I was not aware of, that the newer Wiis are NOT backward compatible with the Gamecube, which I had no idea about and really sucks.  I am going to have to buy an older style of new system now just to make sure I have Gamecube compatibility with it.