Transferring Wii Data to the Wii U is a Complicated Process

By Catherine Cai
published

You can get all your Wii data over to your Wii U, but it's quite a process...

With the Wii U's release just a mere two weeks away, concerns over Wii U and Wii compatibility have been rising.

Nintendo promised that the Wii U would have backwards compatibility with the Wii, though the developer never really gave much in the way of details regarding how it would all work.

With Wii U review units sent out to major gaming media outlets, it's become clear that while the Wii U may have backwards compatibility with the Wii, it won't be an easy process to play Wii games on the Wii U. Not too long ago, it was revealed that Wii games on the Wii U wouldn't work properly with the Wii U Pro Controllers and would require the Wii Classic Pro Controllers.

Joystiq, after receiving its review unit, detailed the process of taking Wii data over to the Wii U. Essentially, a SD card must first be inserted to the Wii U, which must be connected to the Internet, and then the system transfer option must be selected on the Wii U. The SD card is then transferred over to the Wii, which also must be connected to the Internet. A "transfer application" needs to be downloaded from the Wii Shop to transfer all of the Wii's data over to the Wii U and wipe it from the Wii.  

Though it's not too confusing of a process, it certainly seems like getting Wii games to the Wii U and transferring data might be a bit of a hassle.

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Catherine Cai
21 Comments Comment from the forums
  • nun
    not to bad, misleading title.. compare to the ms 360 had to use a special $20 transfer kit just to use a new hard drive on the current gen
    Reply
  • greenspoon
    That does not seem at all complicated to me. About what I would have expected.
    Reply
  • wolley74
    What is the method for those of us who have been saving our data ti SD cards from the start? will we need the app as well or can we just pop it right into the Wii U?
    Reply
  • merikafyeah
    No Gamecube support = fail.

    Hell even the PS3 (ye olde Phat version) can play PS2 AND PS1 games. If Sony can pull off two generations of backwards compatibility (if only for a while), why can't Nintendo?

    It's actually the perfect evil grand master plan to hoard a bunch of early adopter sales. Just say that the console will be backwards compatible with both prior generations, BUT ONLY FOR A LIMITED TIME. That way, herds of oldskoolers will rush to buy it since they have no idea when Nintendo will choke the golden goose and release a smaller- excuse me- "SLIMMER" console which will have none of the features that made the original awesome, but hey, it's 20% smaller AND 20% cheaper!
    What a steal!

    Suckers.
    Reply
  • Certain data and game saves are not transferable from the Wii's internal memory to SD card. Hopefully, the process needed to transfer data from the Wii to the U will fix this issue.
    Reply
  • A Bad Day
    EDIT: And the subscription fee for Xbox live, and the lack of custom contents or mods.

    Compare TF2 on PS3 or Xbox 360 to TF2 on PC as an example.
    Reply
  • A Bad Day
    nunnot to bad, misleading title.. compare to the ms 360 had to use a special $20 transfer kit just to use a new hard drive on the current gen
    And don't forget about the $99 wireless adapter, or the non-market price for a HDD upgrade, or the console games having a higher price to pay for the subsidization of the consoles.

    So much for picking consoles as a low-budget gaming rig.
    Reply
  • ddpruitt
    merikafyeahNo Gamecube support = who cares.

    Hell even the PS3 (ye olde Phat version) can play a couple of PS2 AND even fewer PS1 games.
    Fixed that for ya ;)
    Reply
  • I don't see an issue here. Basically this is for everything but if you don't have vc stuff, you just copy the files to the sd card and move it to the wii u. This is ONLY for protected game saves and vc purchases... So what, you have to do it this one time. big whoop.
    Reply
  • kinggraves
    How is this complicated at all? It's as easy as it can get, they're trying to prevent people from copying protected/paid content from existing on two systems, allowing the user to sell off the old one with the purchases and still keep them on Wii U. Perhaps not the best idea though since Wii is "hacked" and you can get anything off VC for free. Wonder if it will copy over homebrew channel?

    merikafyeahNo Gamecube support = fail.Hell even the PS3 (ye olde Phat version) can play PS2 AND PS1 games. If Sony can pull off two generations of backwards compatibility (if only for a while), why can't Nintendo?
    They can still put GC games on VC. The architecture is likely too different by this point to be compatible with GC at a hardware level. Are you saying you wanted them to put out a third generation based on GC architecture? I sure don't.
    Reply