As a fellow Switch fanboy: Nintendo's online purchasing systems have (until the Switch) been extremely weird. Purchases on the eShop (or equivalent) on Wii, DSi, 3DS, and (IIRC) Wii U weren't tied to an account, they were tied to a console. If your console died, you couldn't just buy another one and automatically get all your games back, you'd have to call Nintendo customer support and get them to move your licenses over. The Switch fixed that but has the new problem that save data can't be backed up (until their paid online service starts in a couple months).
Not just this, but the other mystifying bit is that titles had to be repurchased for different types of devices. Not only did you have to physically migrate your games between consoles, but like, virtual console titles might be available for both 3DS and Wii platforms, but you'd have to buy them separately on each. And the Switch doesn't have "virtual console" persay yet, but will sell some legacy titles, like the new Donkey Kong release under the "arcade archives" label.
In most other companies, like Steam, Xbox, PlayStation, etc., if you buy a title, you can play it on any platform that supports it. The fact that Nintendo players can't accumulate a library of legacy Nintendo titles and play them on any Nintendo console they port it to demonstrates Nintendo has a strong interest in repackaging and reselling the same games over and over again.
The one notable exception to this was that you were given a decently steep discount on "upgrading" Wii VC titles to their essentially identical Wii U versions, like 80% off or so. Still, it really shouldn't have been paid at all.
sure. from a technical point of view their approach sucked (and the market "punished them" for this, right?)
but at least at a philosophical (how things should work) they did the right thing in helping you move your licenses over.
