Your save games are stored in the cloud - for free on Xbox Live and Steam, but only for PlayStation Plus subscribers on PS4 - so you can pick right up where you left off. In all three of those cases, all you need to do if you want to play your digital games on another system is sign in with your account. And Valve lets Steam users access their library simply by signing in on any computer. The same is true on the Xbox One, although Microsoft limits the number of times per year that a user can change their “home” console. Sony uses a similar setup on the PlayStation 4, except customers can use their account across one “primary” console and multiple other PS4s. This is a major step forward for Nintendo, but there’s still plenty of room for improvement. You can only deactivate a Switch from this settings page on the console, so if you don’t have access to your active console - say you sold your Switch to a friend but forgot to deactivate it first - you’ll have to contact Nintendo for help. To deactivate a Switch, you open up the eShop and head to the Account Information for your Nintendo Account. Once you’ve deactivated a Switch, your games will no longer be playable on that console - digital purchases are only accessible from the active Switch, and you’re only allowed to have one of those linked to your Nintendo Account at a time.

In order to play your eShop games on a different Switch, you must first deactivate your existing console before you can sign in with your Nintendo Account on the second Switch and activate it as the new primary console. When you sign in with your Nintendo Account to a Switch, that system automatically becomes the active console tied to your account.

(Downloadable games on Wii and Wii U were linked to the console on which they were purchased, and could only be moved to a new system with a one-way console transfer process.) But while it’s making progress, Nintendo’s solution still falls short of other digital purchasing platforms, from Xbox to Kindle, PlayStation to iOS. It’s approaching the system that everyone has always wanted from Nintendo the company is finally catching up to the way its competitors manage access to digital purchases.

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