Unified accounts come to 3DS and Wii U this month

Decided to make a thread about this since dvader neglected to mention this massive announcement in his Nintendo Direct thread.

By far the most significant piece of news was that following a forthcoming update to the 3DS, you will be able to register your Wii U's Nintendo Network ID on the system, which will then combine your account balance on both systems into one handy Nintendo-branded wallet. If you have a 3DS but no Wii U, you will be able to register a new Nintendo Network ID as well. This update will additionally bring Miiverse support to the 3DS, and YouTube support will be coming for the handheld this month as well.

Credit Giant Bomb

Fantastic. Hoping this means my digital purchases for 3DS games will be associated with the Nintendo Network account instead of solely on the hardware level. That's always been the most annoying part of buying any downloadable games on Nintendo platforms.

I just hope that thing will keep records of things like Street Passes. I was enjoying the little meta games that were tied to the Street Pass feature until my 3DS dies and I lost them all. After that, they're all but meaningless.

Here's hoping they fix that with this update.

Like you said TC, Im hoping that this will mean that Digital purchases will be tied to the account rather than the system. That is the one thing stopping me from purchasing digital games on the thing.

A good move and I do hope that digital purchases tie in. Now get rid of that region-locking Nintendo and you have me sold.

Yea, a step in the right direction, although I doubt this means that games will be taken off of the hardware and tied to accounts. I still maintain my conspiracy theory that Nintendo sees that as a threat to potential profits.

They didn't say anything about the software not being tied to the system anymore though.

That's because even on WiiU, it's both tied to the system and stored in their servers. I wish I could remember which episode of Radio Free Nintendo it was, but Jonny Metts detailed his experience with recovering his digital WiiU content after his console was destroyed in the Colorado floods. He called Nintendo, and they basically switched off the content tied to his dead WiiU and switched it on in his new WiiU. They had a record of everything he had purchased and could easily allow access to it from his new console.

I assume it'll be the same with 3DS. Maybe it'll only record purchases made after the account is tied to an ID (you never know with Nintendo), but it could potentially read your download history and sync it to their servers.