Nintendo and Microsoft seem to be on the ball with their firmware updates for their consoles lately, adding a spate of long requested features to the consoles that they promised would come. Nintendo has just released firmware update 5.1.0 for the Wii U, that adds two long requested features to the console.
The good news, first- all Wii U controllers (including Wii Remotes, Wii Classic Controller, and the Wii U Pro) are now supported for navigation within the Nintendo eShop, addressing a long held complaint people have had about an inconsistent controller usage experience in the Wii U OS that people have had. It might soon be possible to navigate the entire Wii U OS without needing to use the included Wii U Pad at all.
The somewhat bad news- account transfer is now available for the Wii U. Why is this bad news? Because it still doesn’t work as you would expect it to. It’s not a simple case of just unlinking your account from a system, and then logging in to a new one and linking it to that one. No, it works exactly like the 3DS system transfer option, where you need to have both systems present and move the data from one to the other, which sort of makes sense for a handheld, I guess, but no sense at all for a home console.
Still, it’s a half step towards the full featured account management system we want from Nintendo in the future. And judging by some of Nintendo’s recent firmware updates, they are listening.
Hopefully they just manage to join the 21st century before it ends.