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Play Your Downloaded Wii U Games On Any Wii U Console?

Cindy Gordon, the vice-president of corporate affairs at Nintendo of America, was interviewed by GeekMom during last week’s E3. During the interview, Gordon reconfirmed that every Wii U and Nintendo 3DS packaged game will be available as a downloadable title from the Nintendo eShop.

GeekMom asked whether Wii U users can play their downloaded games on someone else’s Wii U and Gordon replied by saying, “You’ll have an account system so you’ll be able to access your account anywhere.” Does this mean we’ll be able to play all of our downloaded games on anyone’s Wii U console?

GeekMom: Can you download a game right away when you see it on your Miiverse? Will you still have physical games too then?

Cindy Gordon: Yes. What we said is that every game for the Wii U, and this is true for the Nintendo 3DS too, will be available in both packaged as well as digital. It’s really about choice. What I remember as a parent, I prefer the download because I won’t lose the disk. But some people thrive on [having the physical game], to each his own.

GeekMom: Is there a way you can play your games on another Nintendo, for example if I go to my parents’ house and want to play on their console?

Cindy Gordon: You’ll have an account system so you’ll be able to access your account anywhere.

44 thoughts on “Play Your Downloaded Wii U Games On Any Wii U Console?”

    1. Why’re you saying that like it’s a bad thing? You shouldn’t need to be able to play your game on other consoles anyway because people could just let others get the game for free via their account. The fact they let you is enough…

      1. They never said transfer the game. They said ACCESS ACCOUNT TO PLAY read people READ! This is a step to prevent gamers from having to lug a disc portfolio around and to PLAY your dl games with friends. Seeing as how some Wii U owners will opt for downloading over retail…how else would THOSE people play their games at someones house without taking their WHOLE system with them; to someones house WHO ALREADY HAS ONE!

  1. i’m just so…flabbergasted by the information that nintendo is trickling out now…WHY WAS THIS NOT AT E3???? That’s the whole point of a trade show isn’t it??? To give out information…and give potential customers a reason as to why they should buy your product….*sigh*

    I hope nintendo knows what it’s doing….

    1. All the more reason to believe that E3 is becoming more redundant by the day. And everyone knew it except us.

  2. All I can say is they better NEVER phase out physical discs. Digital is fine, as long as physical is an option too.

      1. Yeah it is. Consoles themselves will also disappear. Cloud gaming is the future. It may be far off, but it’s going to be here some day.

        1. If you mean things like Onlive, Gaikai, and GFace, then I wouldn’t say it’s going to take over consoles, but be a category of their own next to them. PC’s, Consoles, and Clouds. But if you mean just digital downloads in general, then yes, I expect disks to be a thing of the past, unfortunately.

  3. so basically the games you download will only be playable while you’re logged into your account. that means no fuckface is allowed to play your games unless you say so. if it’s not like that then fuck it.

  4. So does this mean accounts are happening on the 3DS too? Because that’s my main worry. It’s a portable system. I’m very careful with my stuff but you never know. I probably wouldn’t buy many games digitally but if a WarioWare or some other kind if puzzle game were released, I’d definitely buy it digitally. Just because it’s convenient. Something like Tetris makes more sense digital.

    1. Your always going to have YOUR own PORTABLE 3DS so there is really no need. And if your have it linked to a Club Nintendo account then you should be good.

      1. It’s not his point. He’s worried about losing the system or having it stolen. Currently, if that happens to your 3DS, you’re pretty much screwed.

        1. Yes. Which is a pretty fair concern, I think. I don’t want to have several games on my system and then have it slip out my pocket and lose my games as well. I can replace the system but not being able to replace the games would be tragic.

  5. Francisco Alvarado Vega

    It is great new however it may cause a problem for Nintendo if multiple people link to one account to only pay for the game once.

    1. In theory, that’s an issue with any digital distribution platform. I can easily give my Steam password to someone else and let them play all my games, but this doesn’t seem to happen very often.

    2. The way Steam does it is that it checks for any other system using your account, and if you have the right password, it will boot whoever was on it before out. I would assume Nintendo would take the same approach.

  6. I’m going to have to buy an external. the game discs can hold 25gb but the on board memory seems to be 8gb so far

  7. I think this sounds like a great idea, I’m mainly going to download all my Wii U games but I’m going to store them into a 1TB External Harddrive… sounds like overkill I know but with all that download space I wouldn’t need to delete any of my games on the HDD

  8. Excellent news. I’m so glad to hear this, but I was wondering if you can take your Upad and use it at someone else’s house with thier console? How would that work? Leave luck to heaven.

    1. If you can use two U-Pad, then…. you can sync your control like the wii.
      Just look at the wii u picture, you’ll find it in the very front.

  9. you people forgeting that miyamoto said that they were gonna save the titles in your SD card/external hard drive? that means that you can bring that to your friends house then log in with your account connect your sd/external hard drive and you got your game.

  10. This smells like cloud gaming. Obviously the Wii U console’s memory is too small to accommodate other people’s games, so the cloud would be the most viable option.

  11. Right. Let me get this straight. All the download-able games are linked to my account i.e. like Steam? Should my Wii U break I can just get a new one (buy or get replaced), log on and voila all my games are available to re-download at no cost? Sounds like a great deal to me. Or if I will go to my friends place who also has Wii U, I do not need to bring anything with me, so I can arrive with my hands in bocket (except to bring some controllers if required if my friend does not have enough controllers and maybe a USB harddrive where I have backups of all my games). If we want to play some of the games that I own we simply log on as me get the game from harddrive, boot it up and off we go. You could have loads and loads of games there like on Steam. Now if I could also have these games available also on future Nintendo consoles I wouldn’t ask more from life.

    Should I want to buy my games on physical media, this is still an option. This is great option for some of the games that I do not plan to keep forever and would probably sell at some point.

    Either way, sounds like a win/win situation if you ask me. Or did I get it wrong? What do you guys think?

  12. Pingback: You’ll Be Able to Play Your eShop Downloads on Any Wii U

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