Following the confusing and potentially damaging news that Nintendo will currently only allow you to use your Nintendo Network Account on the console on which it was created, we have another caveat to this increasingly complex online system. For all users under the age of thirteen, a one-off fee of $0.50 is required to even set up this Nintendo Network Account in the first place.
It doesn't look like Nintendo is just grabbing money, however. The fee is in place so that a parent or guardian must provide a credit card in order to verify that he or she has consented for the child to have one of these online accounts in the first place. It's all to do with child protection, since despite Nintendo's family-friendly reputation there are bound to be people who manage to get inappropriate messages past the filtering system.
And the credit card information won't be stored on the console, Nintendo says, so the child will be unable to use it to buy things without the parent or guardian's permission, and there should be no security concerns. Even better than that, the fee is only required once per console, so if you happen to have multiple children under the age of thirteen you'll only have to pay it once.
I can see why parents and guardians might be a little disgruntled at this, but as long as the reasoning behind it is explained I imagine most will understand. Now we just need to work out how to stop kids from lying about their age to sign up for Facebook accounts – any ideas?
