Undoubtedly plenty of people in Japan and elsewhere received a shiny new Nintendo Switch for Christmas. However, many new owners have taken to social media to ask what the difference is between the two account systems that Nintendo has – the Nintendo account and the Nintendo Network ID. This prompted Nintendo to send out a tweet on Christmas Day explaining the differences between the two, as spotted by Kotaku.
“Currently, we are getting a great number of inquiries about the Nintendo Account”
The Nintendo Account (for smart devices, computers and Switch consoles) and the Nintendo Network ID (for the 3DS series and the Wii U).
現在、「ニンテンドーアカウント」に関するお問い合わせを多数頂戴しております。ニンテンドーアカウントは、ニンテンドー3DSやWii Uで使用する「ニンテンドーネットワークID」とは異なります。くわしくはサポートページからご覧ください。https://t.co/YjE4B7GPuR pic.twitter.com/BcXHit0TEY
— 任天堂株式会社 (@Nintendo) December 25, 2017
Time to kill off that Nintendo network ID then.
That would not be wise, and will therefore not happen.
If they did, it would make a large amount of the 3DS and Wii U consoles’ functionalities obsolete.
I hate to say it, Enforcer, but the Wii U is LONG dead and the 3DS is at death’s door. The didn’t even bother to remove the Miiverse icons from the systems. Super sloppy.
It is not about them being “dead” or not.
A large amount of games use online connectivity between friends ok these consoles, and even though the Wii U’s sales was less than desirable, there are a great amount of people who owns a 3DS.
Slashing such an overwhelming an ount of features in one move is simply begging for backlash…
Therefore I stand by my point; it will not happen in a near future.
Also, I don’t see why not removing the MiiVerse icons is an issue..?
People will be told it is no longer in service if they press it, which is a convenient way of informing players.
Convenience would be the icon not being there in the first place. :p
Many of the games released throughout the years promote these feastures, not letting players know of it at all would be a misstep.
Okay, maybe not kill it off. But clearly, so far, they haven’t differentiated the two enough for the masses.
I was with you til this comment. “Also, I don’t see why not removing the MiiVerse icons is an issue..?
People will be told it is no longer in service if they press it, which is a convenient way of informing players.” Some, if not most, of us have the blue dot signifying a Spotpass notification permanently trapped on the Miiverse icon because we can’t check Miiverse to see what is causing the blue dot to remain there. It’s a huge eye sore for some of us that either have a slight touch of OCD or even have the full issue of OCD. So I agree with brightstarbeing that leaving it there was sloppy and, in my opinion, down right lazy. If I’m gonna be keeping my 3DS for many, many years to come, I’d rather not see that annoying thing I can’t even use anymore taking up data space on my 3DS. (There are a few other things I wish I could remove from my 3DS, too, that I don’t even use anymore like the AR games and the Streetpass Mii Plaza.)
You are mostly having an issue with a notification that cannot be removed.
I don’t have this issue, but if you have that issue I can certainly agree that Nintendo should disable it.
As much as I agree that those applications are very rarely used, I don’t see Nintendo changing anything just because some might not want certain things…
Why? The Nintendo Network ID enable consumers to get a few rewards when using Nintendo products. I know it´s not a big deal but people can still get some good discounts on digital purchases. Besides, there´s no real difference between them. The account is a single one but the way the ID is shown and works on the older devices is a little different. It´s not confusing at all.
Not really since you can link your NNID to your Switch making it very easy to add friends from your Wii U and 3DS. Plus you never know, we might even be able to finally carry over eShop purchases because of that link once the full online launches.
Well it’s worth keeping around if that would one day happen.
That’d be nice but I won’t hold my breath. But just in case that is part of the full online once it becomes a paying service, I’m gonna hold off on buying the Bayo games for Switch just in case I got them digitally (I can’t remember if I got the games digitally or physically) for Wii U and can actually transfer them from Wii U to Switch free of charge. (It’d be really nice if it is a feature so I can eventually transfer my favorite 3DS digital purchases over to the Switch some day, too, since the NNID was added to the 3DS when Miiverse was added to it. (Hopefully external HDD support will be a thing in the future, too, so I don’t have to spend too much money on extra data storage.))
I was thinking more along the lines of Virtual Console. Games like Bayonetta would require much more work to bring to Switch.
For games that are dependent on the Gamepad, sure, but Bayonetta 1 & 2 weren’t one of them. A simple patch could do it for some games.
I just don’t think you should get your hopes up for retail games carrying over. I don’t think PlayStation and Xbox even do that for digital retail games from PS360. Did they have those even? I’m not sure…
Why exactly?
Till this day im still confused about the need for these two separate accounts lol
What a fantastic article
Nintendo make the whole online process over converluted.. it doesn’t need to be this complicated. The one thing ps and xb had right. 1 account equals 1 id. SIMPLES
It is annoying; I’ll give you that. All they really needed to do was update the NNID system instead of making an entirely new, separated account system. Just goes to show Nintendo are still novices at the whole “online” thing. :/ (Hence why I don’t have too much hope for their full online on Switch… Hopefully they’ll surprise us in the coming year of 2018…)
Honestly, if we can’t one day transfer our digital purchases on Wii U & 3DS to the Switch some day, then what was the point in allowing people to connect the NNID to the Nintendo Account? Til this stuff happens, I’m gonna feel like I wasted my time connecting the two…
Of course, this wouldn’t have been an issue to begin with if they simply just updated the NNID system instead of creating an entirely new one. You didn’t see Sony creating something called PlayStation Account & scrapping PlayStation Network when they created the PS4, after all. (Knowing Nintendo, though, they did this to be “different” from Sony because Nintendo Network was too similar in name to PlayStation Network! *rolls eyes*)
*facepalms* Totally forgot the transfer Wii U friends to Switch aspect of linking the two. Still, it doesn’t make my second paragraph any less meaningful as simply updating NNID would have been sufficient.
It is not confusing at all. I don’t get the whole commotion about it. Maybe it’s an internet thing where everything has to be hyperbolic to the maximum.
Nintendo Account is for 5 3DS systems and 2 Wii U systems. Nintendo Network ID is for one 3DS and one Wii U. Nintendo Account encompasses all owned systems.
It’s just the stupid naming… Nintendo has been naming their stuff really horribly since the WiiU and New 3DS.
I dont blame people for being confused.