So you've built up a decent library of Virtual Console games and WiiWare titles on your Wii, but now that the Wii U is coming, you're not sure how or even if you'll be able to transfer those purchases to Nintendo's shiny new machine. What will become of your hard-earned Lost Winds, Mega Man 10, or Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth purchases? How will you move famous classics like Mega Man 2, Bonk's Revenge, and Yoshi's Story over to the next generation of hardware? And what about all of your save game progress accumulated over hours spent with Super Mario Galaxy, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl? What will it takes to move all of this material to the Wii U? Even Nintendo itself doesn't know yet, but claims that a solution is in the works. Polygon fills us in:
[A]sked if Wii owners will be able to transfer their downloaded Wii and Virtual Console games over to Wii U, a Nintendo producer answered rather positively: "we are readying the system to be able to transfer saves and everything you've bought."
It's a delicate situation, especially given the Wii's console-tied system for downloaded content — all purchases are non-transferable to other hardware, and with a broken / sold Wii, so goes your digital library. As for the logistics, Nintendo had nothing more to say and moved on to the next question — with no universal ID, we can't imagine it'll be an easy one.
Nintendo has its work cut out for itself here, particularly since it looks like the company's short-sighted approach to some sort of unified content management system is biting it once again. It would be great if one could just copy the content to be moved onto the Wii's SD card and then drop that SD card into the Wii U, but somehow I doubt it'll be that easy. At least now we know that all of our digital purchases from the past six years won't go to waste in the new GamePad future.
