i got burned by going Nintendo digital only and it seems like I might be making that mistake again. So here’s a long story of assumptions, bad choices and getting burnt by trusting Nintendo would do the right thing. I love Nintendo and would love to go all digital for them, but I did it once and I came out on the losing end. I’d own some pretty rare expensive games physically otherwise. Remember how much style those Pikmin system transfers Nitendo made for Wii U & 3DS?
Now this isn’t so much about the eshops, at first just called the Wii Shop Channel and DSi shop. But I did want to mention that they used to all have some amazing music, sadly that’s no longer the case with the Switch eshop. I don’t hate the name eshop and at least it’s been the consistent name with all their consoles since 3DS in 2011. But I do hate that orange logo, it doesn’t work, the original blue color for the shops worked so much better. They changed it to red recently and it’s perhaps just a sidegrade, not really an upgrade. I do miss the animations and style the earlier shops had as well.
My digital Nintendo ecosystem life began with the Wii which is when they first gave this ability to download games. To me when they announced the Virtual Console it felt like something permanent, something that would carry over forever. I knew perhaps third party games would be an issue but not first party Nintendo games so I mostly kept my collection first party only.
I was cocky and knew that Virtual Console would carry over to the next system and it did. But not how I expected it, I did not like that you needed to pay to upgrade your games for Wii U or that I had to wait the drip feed releases one more time. But I thought, perhaps Nintendo would get it right for the Wii U’s successor and wanted my ppurchases to carry over so I upgraded my games, at least the ones that arrived, I believe there was one or two games that never made it to the Wii U though that I owned.
When the DSi came out, I went all in. It made sense that I’d want Brain Age, Picross as installed apps since it’s something you’d “use” every day. Then they had the Game & Watch games which is sort of like a Virtual Console. Sort of since they were not emulated but recreated. I supported all of the releases being a big fan, unfortunately there wasn’t much demand and it was discontinued after just releasing a couple of titles. These of course carried over to the 3DS and I was more comfortable with my handheld Nintendo future downlaodable titles.
For the 3DS I didn’t originally plan to be all digital, at first I thought I’d only buy the games and I started with Animal Crossing New Leaf since it made sense for it to be the game you’d always want to have installed, then I thought the same for Pokemon XY. And then I proceeded to buy everything digitally instead. Even though it had become more expensive as I could often find better deals with physical. Near the end of the 3DS’s life I realized my mistake and only bought games physically.
The 3DS also had a Virtual console, it started with Game Boy games but they quickly pretended it never existed and moved on to NES/SNES, except nothing carried over. I thought Nintendo would eventually ‘understand’ and allow a “one VC” title thing but that never came to pass. I did have some NES VC games on my 3DS but that was because of the ambassador program. The only VC game I bought for 3DS were Game Boy & Gameboy Color games since I wanted those to carry over. The only NES game I got was Donkey Kong Original Edition and that’s because that specific game had never been available to buy on American Wii or Wii U shops. Now to get that game I did have to buy a digital game I didn’t want (Paper Mario Sticker Star).
With the Wii U I’m not sure how it started, It just made sense to me. I’m never going to sell any of my Nintendo consoles so it’s safe to just buy games digitally and I did. My only non digital game for most of its life was NintendoLand since it came with the system. I proceeded to buy every game that came out digitally and was happy with my choice. I can’t remember when I realized it was a bad choice. The last 2 games I bought were physical.
What broke me was when the Switch was announced, they were giving us all these Wii U games with small improvements. But we had to buy them again. I understood if you had bought them physically but Nintendo had the games registered in accounts, they could’ve given us ANY type of discount. They didn’t. They were also discontinuing the Virtual Console instead having games for a paid online service. I felt like Nintendo had spat on my face. I coudln’t even sell my older copies now to buy the upgraded versions, they were stuck on the Wii U forever including my VC titles. Which I only bought as many games as I did since I always thought it was going to be able to be brought back in every console.
With the Switch I decided to go physical only even if I had to pay more and I kept that promise outside of DLC. With Switch 2 I planned on keeping to that strategy but at least for now my Switch 2 life begins digitally since I was only able to preorder the bundle that included Digital Mario Kart.
Granted I made a lot of assumptions and got burned by them so I was at fault. But to say Nintendo wasn’t being greedy is also not right. Now that Nintendo Switch Online is evolving into a Game Pass like service and has a big library after being drip fed for years, I can finally see that Nintendo could finally understand where to take this retro library to their benefit. But these are all assumptions. I can’t fully trust Nintendo enough to go full digital again. At least with physical I can recoup some of the value if I have to rebuy a game later.