Yes, You Can Move Your Wii U ID To Another Console, Say Nintendo of America

But Nintendo of Europe don’t seem to have got the memo.

One of the Wii’s biggest annoyances was it’s approach to licenses for downloadable games. Licenses were tied to your console, and if your Wii broke then you would lose all of your games – Forever.

It was thought that the Wii U did a similar thing, although the system’s documentation hinted that this might be temporary and could possibly be changed in future.

But a recent Kotaku report mentions that a recent conversation with Nintendo of America confirms that as part of their Wii U repair service, they would transfer their Wii U online profile, along with all their software licenses.

However, this may not be true for Nintendo of Europe, after a forum post on Giant Bomb seems to confirm that Nintendo of Europe don’t offer this facility (Taken from a transcription from the Kotaku post, “Rosie” is the NoE Support rep, and “You” is the unfortunate customer):

Rosie: Indeed, I can confirm that Nintendo Network accounts can’t be moved between consoles.

You: What if I had bought eShop stuff?
You: Thankfully that’s not the case here but can’t I have my username anymore?

Rosie: Then the original console with purchases would have to be returned to us so we could move the purchases. I am sorry to confirm that you cannot have the same username.

You: Well I’m not happy about that, is there someone I can talk to that can sort this out for me because at the moment it’s pointless me having this system without my username.

Rosie: There is no-one who can change this, there is no facility to move to your old account or delete the user name, the only option is to create a new account and username.

You: That’s not good enough

Rosie: I’m sorry to hear that but there is no other way.

You: It might seem like a small thing but i don’t want a different username and its not my fault the system decided to break

You: I paid £300 for this expecting from Nintendo that all would be well and now its just turned into a joke.

Rosie: I do understand what you are saying, however the only option is to make a new username.

You: i don’t want a new username i want mine i can give you the serial number of the broken console and you can check yourself

Rosie: As I said before there is no facility to move that account or delete the username.

You: It’s not impossible to do – PS3 and Xbox handle it just fine

Rosie: We have a different system to those companies.

Here’s hoping that this is something that is rectified in all regions as soon as possible, as this could become a big problem for Nintendo and their customers.