Purchases can apparently only be on one system at a time.

Want to play your purchased Nintendo Switch downloads on multiple separate consoles? You'd better be prepared to buy more than one copy of each game.

We recently learned that the Nintendo Switch will finally link eShop purchases to a portable online account (unlike the Wii, Wii U, and 3DS, which locked purchases to a specific piece of hardware). But we're now discovering that this feature apparently does not extend to downloading games to multiple Switch systems at the same time.
The news comes via a recent preview event for 1-2-Switch at the Nintendo World NYC store, which included a question-and-answer session captured by YouTuber CrazyDopetastic. A questioner talks about the potential for getting a second Switch for his children and asks, "if I want to take my system with me... if I were to buy a digital game, could I buy it once, or would I have to buy it multiple times so they can use those games?"

The translated answer, from Nintendo Entertainment Planning & Development General Manager Shinya Takahashi: "Currently we don't have a system like that in place for Nintendo Switch, but we haven't made any final decisions about how we would approach that going forward in the future, so unfortunately I can't provide any concrete answer for you right now."

In other words, for now, it sounds like a Nintendo account (and its linked eShop purchases) can only be linked to one Nintendo Switch system at a time (that's assuming nothing was lost in the translation, of course).

As described, this would be a pretty major difference between the Switch and competing systems from Sony and Microsoft. Both the PS4 and the Xbox One allow you to play your games across multiple consoles if you confirm your identity with an online login. As long as your Xbox Live or PSN account isn't logged in to two systems at the same precise moment, Sony and Microsoft don't care what specific piece of hardware you're playing on.

PC-based services like Steam let you log in from up to 10 computers and even allow you to share your entire library with another account remotely via Family Sharing.

The restrictions on Switch game sharing obviously doesn't apply to physical games, which work directly in any Switch console with no need to even install the game off of the tiny cartridge. And as far as we can tell, all of the up to eight console-centric user accounts on a single Switch should be able to share any and all games downloaded to that system.

The Switch's portable form factor also makes it a little bit easier to physically share downloaded games with people in the same household—you can just hand them the system or insert it into a second dock hooked to another TV (if you have $80 to spare, that is). Of course, that arrangement won't work if one of you wants to take the Switch on a trip and someone else wants to play on another system at home.

We're currently testing out our own Switch in Ars' Orbiting HQ and will have fuller thoughts and impressions soon, but we won't be able to confirm anything about the system's online functions until they're activated around the system's March 3 launch.

Nintendo with that again. If you sell your system and dont make a lot of things you lost all your content when you buy a new one.

the online service from nintendo could be really better, but nintendos consoles remaind the only CONSOLES without to pay for online gaming, something i really wish back for playstation games.

Sharing games like on steam would be really great, its just a bit weird with nintendo, i sometimes have the feeling they are lost in times like this and just can't get back to be a mainstream production.

But well lets see how nintendos switch will sell, i just hope they will release Mario Odessey and a new RetroStudio game soon, i will buy those as retail version anyway - so i don't really care much about eshop games :-)

Well thanks for the article - like added :-)