Nintendo Wii - can't transfer paid-for games from broken machine

ericthelobster

Having a bit of a blood-boiling situation here at the moment. Son has a Wii console for which he's downloaded quite a lot of games from Nintendo over the past 2 years, for which he's paid a fair sum of money.

The console has now failed for no apparent reason (DVD drive won't operate), but outside of warranty, and it's not economical to repair so grudgingly he's had to buy a new one.

Not surprisingly, he wants to transfer the games he's paid for on to the new machine, which you'd think would be reasonable, wouldn't you? However, it can't be done. The email I've received from Nintendo states:

"We are unable to complete a data transfer for any games or channels you have downloaded due to security reasons and data protection. The only way we are able to transfer data is when the console has been returned to us for repair issues."

Plainly, the security and data protection reasons are utter rubbish; this is a measure which they have implemented to prevent wholesale illegal copying of downloaded games between users, but for which they have failed to make any allowance for legitimate activities such as what my son wishes to do.

Can anyone advise, can they do this? is there any consumer regulation whereby my son has any redress?

It's particularly galling, since if Nintendo's own quoted fee for repair had not been prohibitively expensive, my son would have gone down that route instead! :mad:

Anihilator

No he doesnt. This will no doubt be in their terms.

For all they know your son sold his nintendo and now wants the games on both. Possibly return it to them for destruction and they might allow it?

durham_girl

You could ask them if they would credit you with some points to cover the cost of rebuying the games on the new machine as a goodwill gesture.

ericthelobster

Anihilator wrote: »

For all they know your son sold his nintendo and now wants the games on both. Possibly return it to them for destruction and they might allow it?

Understandably they need to protect against that eventuality, but then so does every other computer software manufacturer; it can't be reasonable to do this at the expense of legitimate users doing what my son wants to do. Even the dreaded Micro$oft don't pull this sort of stunt.

The more I learn about Nintendo the lower my opinion of them... I asked my son how much he's spent on these downloaded games and he's unable to give me a straightforward answer as this is apparently concealed from the user; furthermore all purchases are made not in "pounds" but in "Wii points" (which you pre-buy with "pounds"!) which to me seems to serve no purpose other than to deflect the true cost away from the user.

Anyway, the amount he's lost is well over £100, which is more than the cost of either the brand new drive we bought or the apparently non-cost-effective repair.

As a last resort I may try the 'appealing to their better nature' route but want to rule out any possible 'unfair contract' type stuff first.

Nex0

Surely it would of been cheaper to fix by sending it to Nintendo rather then just going and buying a new one.

Dvd drives aren't that expensive.

ericthelobster

Nex0 wrote: »

Surely it would of been cheaper to fix by sending it to Nintendo rather then just going and buying a new one.

You'd think so; but they do a 2-tier fixed-price repair scheme for so-called 'minor' and 'major' problems: I can't remember the cost details now but it was certainly silly money versus getting a brand new unit (or so I thought...)

molerat

Have you asked if you can send them the old unit to destroy and transfer the rights to the new unit ?

whatmichaelsays

Unfortunately, this is one of the problems with the growth of digital media and Nintendo aren't the only company to introduce restrictive DRM (iTunes anybody?)

Unfortunately I suspect that their DRM policy is in their T&Cs which your son, knowingly or not, has agreed to.

The irony in all of this is that DRM, whilst trying to prevent piracy, is arguably encouraging piracy. There's not a chance that I'd pay £0.79 for a track on iTunes when it is restricted to installation on five PCs and only playable (in its off the shelf format at least) on an Apple iPod.

ericthelobster

whatmichaelsays wrote: »

The irony in all of this is that DRM, whilst trying to prevent piracy, is arguably encouraging piracy. There's not a chance that I'd pay £0.79 for a track on iTunes when it is restricted to installation on five PCs and only playable (in its off the shelf format at least) on an Apple iPod.

I agree; but at least with iTunes there's the facility to register and de-register the 5 machines with are authorised to play the paid-for music; plus you can prepare backups of music you've downloaded - neither of which feature in Nintendoland...

vyle

You'd need to at the very least send the wii back to ninty. The wii, unlike xbox/ps3 doesn't have an accounts system for you yo log in or out. The DLC is attributed to the wii code/wii itself and is not something that you can easily transfer.

When my wii broke, I sent it back, and they transferred my dlc.

While I don't like nintendo as a company (anybody who remembers their iron fisted actions in the mid 80s/early 90s will know why...and their hatred of europe notwithstanding), they're not the only ones to use 'points' to disguise the true price of DLC. Microsoft is the same. That being said, it's not rocket science to work out how much the points cost, then do a tiny bit of mental arithmetic to see how much the true cost is.

Do you still have the original wii?