After reading about the new DLC that debuted for New Super Mario Bros. 2 today, I decided that maybe before I start investing in DLC I should bite the bullet and start moving games available in digital format from carts to downloads. What better title to start with than NSMB2?, I asked myself.
So, now it turns out I can’t download the DLC yet, because you can only do that via the Coin Rush menu. Which you can only access once you’ve completed World 1. Which my new download version hasn’t accomplished yet because cartridge games save data to cart, rather than SD card. I find this kind of baffling, actually. I thought one idea behind supporting SD cards was to cut down on cart costs by making them read-only, saving data to the system’s memory slot rather than the cart itself. Everything I assumed was a lie.
Stymied, I decided to use my import 3DS to download E.X. Troopers… which, it turns out, isn’t available digitally. Only as a cart.
Nintendo, man.
I thought I had read that Nintendo was going to allow you to convert/move saves over, but that wasn’t coming until sometime next year? I’m waiting for that and hopefully for nintendogs + cats to be available digitally.
Do yourself a favor and don’t even bother with Nintendo’s online efforts in any capacity. I think of Nintendo as a great toy company and it makes me feel better.
I understand not being able to access the DLC until you reach a certain point, but not even being able to download it? That’s just weird and counterintuitive. Leave it to Nintendo.
Yep. I was all set to re-buy a bunch Nintendo games in digital form until I found out about this issue. It seems like they are throwing money with that design decision.
The only (completely cynical) reason I can imagine for storing saves on the cart instead of on the SD card would be to make it harder for multiple people in a household to share a single cart across multiple 3DSes… but that only really makes sense for stuff that has only one save file (Mario Kart, Pokemon, etc.).
I’m not biting on any of Nintendo’s full-price game digital offerings until they establish some sort of account system to protect the consumer.
I just recently set up a Wii U and there is no reason why I shouldn’t just be able to activate my Wii U on my Club Nintendo account and carry all of my previously downloaded games across. Same goes for the 3DS. That system works just fine on Apple & Sony products.
In fairness, there is nothing to protect. That is, there is no place on a Nintendo Network account for Virtual Console and WiiWare, it seems– at least, not yet. Those items are only available and run through the Wii mode, which is like a separate infrastructure altogether at this point.
The fact that Nintendo waited until launch day for the Network to go live, a few days after for Amazon and Hulu Plus, and still longer for Nintendo TVii seems to clearly indicate that this cake wasn’t ready to come out of the oven yet, and icing such as WiiWare and VC availability will no doubt have to wait.
Trust me, I’m with you on this– everything is remaining on my Wii until I feel it’s worthwhile to make the transfer. But for whatever reason, I just don’t think the Wii U is ready for it yet.