Couldn’t this count as agreeing under a duress (or, a threat for your property to be effectively seized/disabled)? Would such agreement still count as binding?
Haha! Have fun, Nintendo, refunding people the purchase prices of their 2-year old consoles!
Yeah, I don’t think this is going to end well for Nintendo even if there’s a private arbitration clause in the original EULA.
Best guess: they’re going to argue about this for a few days, and then claim it was a bug and they never meant to do it, and issue a fix.
That’s not exactly a kill-switch, but equally horrible. I agree with @popobawa4u, it’s time for a mass refund campaign. Also, I know a good class-action attorney who would love to sink his teeth into this.
I wonder if the new EULA violates the old one?
What exactly was changed in the new agreement anyway? I don’t really pay attention to this sort of thing very much; I just figure it basically says “no hacking or doing other things we don’t like”.
Don’t you just love how these eula, contracts, etc. work. The companies get to change things around anytime they like but we are stuck with no rights at all.
I bet the old EULA is something like this:
We’ll give you all the rights and benefits you can think of*
*this agreement is subject to change without notice
Yeah, it’s not a kill switch, they simply don’t allow you to do anything but agree to the EULA once it comes up. The only way to “decline” the new EULA is to turn off the device and never use it again. (So it’s totally your choice!)
I always run into this same problem in old-school RPGs. The game asks me if I want to save the the village, and no matter how many times I click “no”, the game won’t let me go on until I click “yes”.
Ah, classic Nintendo!
Who reads those things?
Well, if Nintendo really wants so badly to keep their hardware, then they can have it. I can find more deserving companies to give my money to.
Sometimes they are good for the lulz. No picking around the thing’s guts - yes, sure, mwahahahahahah! 
If “subject to change without notice” was legally valid, then there would be no need to agree to a new one. Unless that’s the joke.
A question: is there any case law to support these shrink-wrapped EULAs as legally binding?
“I am altering the terms of the agreement. Pray I don’t alter them any further”
Why I think Nintendo has nothing substantial here:
Web services do this all of the time. Yahoo, PayPal, etc - but they only exist as web based services, so they can argue that you would need to accept how their service works in order to use it. The problem with the Wii U is that it is a physical device, an appliance. So far as I know, any agreements about warrantee and usage are going to relate to the device as it was purchased by the consumer. It is not sold primarily as a “service” which can be switched off if you no longer subscribe to it. The device itself still needs to work the way it did when you bought it.
I suspect that in most jurisdictions, warrantee protections are going to trump their EULA. EULAs are already disputed as being capricious and vague. Nintendo can shut users off from their network, or deny them updates, but I think they can’t get away with leaving customers an effectively inoperable unit.
Do you think they know that in Germany clicking “yes” under EULAs has no legal meaning at all?
so… if I agree to it, life just goes on the way it had been going on before? or am I supposed to start feeling angry because Nintendo made me agree to this?
Also in this case you have already paid for the device. Now you should be able to bring it back to Nintendo and get back the exact price you paid… 
