Wow, first the 3DS announcement and then this.  It's almost as if there is some kind of mole in the Nintendo Offices that's just making announcements and launching services before the marketing guys are able to tell anyone about it.

I'm having fun imagining them releasing a title like this where there isn't suppose to be any releases for the week and then BAM!!!  Zelda Wii is out!

As I mentioned yesterday (in the Nintendo console section), they are odd choices. Super Mario Bros. 3 is already one of the best selling VC games, why not put up some of the games that are not selling very well? Oh well, hopefully they expand this to offer most, if not all, games in the Wii Shop Channel.

Welcome to the 21st century Nintendo.....

Until I discovered Nintendos Zipcode tool, I couldn't purchase Wii points with my credit card through the shop channel because I live in Japan using an American Wii on a Military installation and the system isn't made to "recognize" regular FPO addresses. Paying 25 bux for 2000 points was sickening to my stomach and quite retarded might I add.

Nintendo is the creator and OWNER of all things Nintendo, not being able to purchase Wii points directly from them is confusing, imagine if we could only purchase iPhone/iPod Apps from Best Buy......

I'm in complete agreeance with TJ Spyke, put all that stuff up there but lets add some type of SALE once in a while.

and Zoltan might be on to something by mentioning the 3DS, by making this real world currency, this might be setting up the possibility of getting around the console tied DSi/WiiWare/VC so you can transfer those to your NEW DS system if you own them already and now they'll be tied to an Nintendo account.

Maybe Nintendo's plan is to test this out with a game that is a proven success.  If they used one that is not selling well and it didn't sell well on the online store does that mean the online store is a bomb or the game is?

The flipside is that what if everybody who would buy a game from their website already owns SMB3? That is the problem with using only one game. It's like asking one person what they think of a movie and then basing decisions on that.

SMB3 is an odd choice not because it's popular but because it's 500 points, which means when you buy 1,000 points online you have 500 left over after buying it.  It's pretty easy to spend 500 points on something.

A game with an odd price point--say 600 of 1,200 points would be better.  I've seen a number of people skip over a 1,200 point title not because it was too expensive but because they didn't know what they'd do with the extra 800 points they'd be forced to buy.

I didn't say it was a good idea.  ;)  Just trying to guess what Nintendo's intent was.

A sample of titles of different levels of popularity, but all considered good games, would be ideal.

Exactly, I have 200 points sitting in my account and I don't feel like buying 1000 points if I only want a 500 point game.

That's one area where Sony's got the best system: real human currency, and as long as what you're buying is at least $5 you can just pay exactly how much the game costs instead of blocks of Nintendo or Microsoft FunBucks.

It wouldn't be so bad if they let you buy a specific amount (i.e. letting you buy 600 Wii Points or 1300 or whatever). At least Nintendo has simple conversion of 100 Wii/DSi points = $1 (or whatever the local currency is) instead of Microsoft's ridiculous system (which I think is 100 Microsoft points = $0.80), which is obviously designed to deceive people into not realizing how much they are spending.

It's the other way around, 80 MS points = $1. Yeah, Nintendo's system is a lot better than that, at least in NA, Japan, and continental Europe. The UK doesn't get that simplicity of conversion. Still, exact dollar (or euro or pound or yen) amounts and the ability to simply buy the game without having to add arbitrary amounts of proprietary currency to your account is the best method currently available, and should be adapted by Nintendo and Microsoft. (To be fair, Microsoft's Games on Demand games show the price in real money, so maybe they're moving in that direction.)

I just remembered:

http://www.amazon.com/World-Online-Game-Code-nintendo-wii/dp/B00213JM9O/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1269928431&sr=8-2

Amazon.com has something like this for World of Goo, if the service is anything like that then it's likely not to go anyware... :(

What.  The.  Hell.

Buy 1,000 points and get yourself Cave Story!

Which is exactly what I did last night when I bought 2,000 points to buy Ogre Battle 64.  I already had 200 points in my account beforehand, so I had exactly what I needed for Cave Story.

Of course, now I'm 100 points short of what I need for the final case of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney.  :'(

As for the topic itself, it's nice to see Nintendo finally moving forward and enacting alternative methods of buying download games, though they really should have started with a larger case study that encompassed a variety of games; types; and prices.

This may be a weird theory, but perhaps one motivation for this is to improve sales by getting the games into search engine results. Nintendo's official website must have a very high index value on Google, so by listing these games again on their site, they help drive more people to the game descriptions (and provide an immediate link to purchase, without even turning on a Wii).

Not a bad theory, actually.  If you Google "super mario bros 3 wii" the page on Nintendo's site where you can buy the game is the first option on the list.  ;D

After following that link, I'm surprised that they didn't do that with each and every WiiWare, DSiWare & VC game since the very beginning of each service.

If you sell the people the games over the internet on the PC, maybe they will be a little more inclined to hook their systems up to the internet so they can actually download and then play them.