Best way to “preserve” Wii U eshop downloads?

[jimidini]

Originally Posted by emailking

and there is a way to play it on any other PS4 that you want to as well.

Nah, you can play these digital games on ONE PS4 that you marked as home console (without Sony's permission you can't change this home console, aka when servers go down, you can't change that) - and on any other PS4 you need internet 24/7 and Sony server access otherwise these PS4s will boot you out of your game.

You can't play your digital games on other PS4s without Sony's permission too aka online DRM.

Back on PS3 you were able to mark TWO as home consoles, maybe even 3 originally. Sony changed that to 1 PS4, because tons of people abused that system.

See here: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards...ion-3/68612392

Four, two home consoles and two portables.

If one of your consoles breaks and you can no longer activate your account on a new one, go to their website and you can deactivate your account on all consoles it's active on regardless of whether or not said console still exists (as in, you could vaporize your PS3 and it won't stop you from deactivating your account from it) and it'll reset your active consoles to 0.

Note: This can only be done once every six months, so if you've done it recently to free up your active accounts, buy a new PS3 and it breaks, then buy another one and it breaks, then buy a third, you're screwed until that six month period is over and you can do it again.

For all of these changes you need Sony's permission. Without Sony servers handling that, you can't change any of that and when your 2 PS3s break down, your digital games are gone. Meanwhile I can play my physical PS3 games on other PS3s without problems.

There is also some silly CMOS battery issue. At least they fixed that on PS4 last year. It meant that when your CMOS battery runs out of power, you can't play any game at all anymore unless you get connection ONCE to Sony servers after replacing the battery. Yeah, nothing works not even physical games anymore.
On PS3 there is a similar problem, which hasn't been patched. I don't know the details anymore, but it affects digital downloads. Without Sony servers I think you can't play digital games anymore after battery replacement. CMOS batteries run around 10 years.

Physical >>>>>>>> digital downloads

(of course all the updates are another problem, especially on PS4, but also on PS3, without Sony servers you won't get any patches anymore, this means even with physical you only get the version that was pressed onto the disc, that's why I try to buy GOTY editions all the time with all patches included on disc/cart. For Switch at least Nintendo is sort of nice and put Breath of the Wild on cart with ALL updates and ALL DLC, I will be able to play that even when Nintendo turned off Switch servers)

On Wii U especially the first party releases were properly tested, this means there were almost no patches as in bugfixes. Some games got patched and new content was added like for Captain Toad Treasure Tracker. That content will also be gone when Nintendo shuts down update servers. That's why the Switch situation is really bad with all the tons of updates and that's why you should always keep an eye on everything being on cart, because when you have to download half of the game via internet, that content will be missing in the future and in the worst case the cart will be 100% worthless.

TL;DR: digital downloads are not "the future"