Nintendo Launches 3DS Miiverse, Shared Wii U/3DS eShop Accounts

After much anticipation, Nintendo has launched Miiverse on 3DS. Along with it, you will now be able to connect your 3DS NNID (Nintendo Network ID) to your Wii U NNID to share eShop balances.

Nintendo posted an official changelog detailing this and other changes. You will now be able to make a new NNID for your 3DS, and these NNIDs will now support Nintendo eShop. Furthermore, if you already have an eShop account on a Wii U you own, you can connect your 3DS and Wii U eShop accounts, sharing balances between them.

Be warned: Nintendo did not copy Sony’s PSN system wholesale. You cannot use your Wii U NNID on your 3DS, and vice versa. Deleting your NNID on either platform means losing your digitally downloaded games. Registering an NNID also means you can’t switch regions on your 3DS, or use multiple currencies anymore.

Miiverse itself now has both 3DS and Wii U layers. Whatever platform you are on, you can freely access Wii U and 3DS communities, and everything you can do on Wii U, you can do on 3DS, including posting screenshots of games you are playing.

Other welcome additions include a notification for when updates are available, allowing more than five system transfers per system, changing 3DS camera start up to pressing L and R buttons simultaneously from the HOME screen, and the perfunctory stability and usability changes.  

Again, it is important to note that Nintendo has still not unified 3DS and Wii U NNIDs, and perhaps for security purposes, has no plans to do so, at least not while the memory of why Swapnote was taken out is fresh in consumers’ minds. Let’s not look a gift in the mouth though; Nintendo has basically implemented almost everything that you could possibly want from NNID unification short of actually doing it. If you own a 3DS, you owe it to yourself to get this update installed ASAP.