Nintendo Says F You With One-Time-Use Wii Speak Code

[wraggster]

Ars discovered that the upcoming Nintendo Wii Speak peripheral—a microphone that finally lets you communicate to other Wii users online—comes with a 16 character code to download the "Wii Speak" channel. This is a one time use code, which cannot be replaced if lost. What does this mean to you? It means you can NEVER sell this thing, NEVER give it away or NEVER use it on another Wii Console than the one it was first downloaded on. We know game studios and publishers hate secondhand sales, because they don't get revenue from it, but this is HARDWARE. Nintendo's seriously going to limit what you can do with hardware you purchased? You go too far, sir. You go too far.

http://gizmodo.com/5087928/nintendo-says-f-you-with-one+time+use-wii-speak-code

[royvedas]

Yeah. It is extremely lame and ought to be illegal. I don't see the difference between hardware and software though. I bought Gears of War 2 with "5 bonus levels" or something. I have to download these levels and won't be able to sell these. What the f*** is going on?

[Brainy142]

hat $#@!#@ up, pirates are just going to twist the system and nobody who actually buy's it will be able to use their codes.

[sean.aaron]

This appears to be mountains out of molehills folks. The only thing this impacts is the ability to download the Wii Speak Channel -- games don't even use that and unless you're dying to use it to speak to friends over your Wii's WiFi connection I don't see that not having that channel would be a big loss.

Still, the thing's going to be cheap enough that I don't see much of a 2nd-hand marketplace anyway, so it does make the notion of the one-time code use seem a bit silly for Nintendo...

[souLLy]

It's a shame when legitimate users are forced to use shady means in order to run software/hardware they purchased legally. Not cool Nintendo.

[Buddy4point0]

Yea, that's ridicules.
If your wii beaks and you send it in, they do a hard drive swap, and bang... you have to buy a new mic.
Hopefully they'll at least sell the cards by themselves.

[WizardOfOdd]

If any games worth playing online were ever actually released for the Wii I might start caring.

[Grey Acumen]

are people retarded? This has nothing to do with second hand sales, this has to do with proprietary hardware use. This is just a USB microphone. I'll lay odds that ANY USB microphone could work with the Wiispeak channel, but Nintendo wants to make sure that you can only get the channel if you have actually bought the Wii brand Microphone.

[Shadowblind]

If any games worth playing online were ever actually released for the Wii I might start caring.

This

[sean.aaron]

Yea, that's ridicules.
If your wii beaks and you send it in, they do a hard drive swap, and bang... you have to buy a new mic.
Hopefully they'll at least sell the cards by themselves.

That would probably be a non-issue as Nintendo are pretty good about ensuring your Shop Channel ID is tied to your kit if you have a system ID change resulting from a system board swap as happened with me. I would expect that once you've input the code for the initial Channel download you'll be able to re-download at will in future for any updates, etc.

It does seem lame, but I guess they're trying to give incentive to get their microphone as opposed to a 3rd party one as Grey Acumen has suggested.

[lipnox88]

dont worry now that nintendo is on top there going to do everything possible to sink even lower then they were on the cube.