One step forward, two steps back

[JSR]

Every new generation of consoles has improved on the previous in most ways. We have gotten better graphics and amazing online components to name a few. Sometimes they still manage to make something worse.

This generation has changed the way our game saves work. Many of them are simply locked to your console. You can't copy or move them, not even for back up purposes. So if your console dies, all your progress - all the hours spent on those games - are gone. Forever. The same thing applies if you play the game on a friends console. Maybe you want to bring Super Smash Brothers Brawl and your save file over to a friend, so that all the characters are unlocked. Well, thats too bad. You have to unlock them on every single console you want to play the game on.

That's just my current irk, as I'm trying to update my Wii in order to buy Metroid from the Store channel, but due to a error code, I need to format the thing, and lose all progress in more than half of the games I have played on it. Steep price to pay, in order to pay. For more software from Nintendo.

I'm sure there have been other poor design decisions on new console generations to.

[Flabio]

This is the last generation that'll be an issue though. Cloud storage of saves and profiles will be the norm going forward.

[JSR]

Which will probably present new problems.

Just formatted my Wii, didn't do squat. So now I've lost all my saves for nothing. Nintendo still won't let me download the update and pay them. Another irk of this generation: the reliance on internet based services, which often don't work as well as they should.

[Charlie]

Can't you download Wii saves from Gamefaqs and similar sites? It's not an entirely satisfactory solution, I know, but least it removes the tedium of having to play through those games in their entirety again.