Obvious Diversion

Nintendo is opening an online videogame store for the Wii that they say will emulate the successful model that iTunes has established for music and video. This store will features games from Nintendo, Sega, Hudson and likely many more from the last twenty plus years.

Nintendo’s Store Could Be the Next iTunes for Windows

It’s a game lover’s dream and it’s been announced for Nintendo’s new console Wii. But what if Nintendo announced their online store for all three platforms? Sound Crazy? It’s no crazier than Apple releasing iTunes for Windows. These games are running on nothing more than software emulators and these emulators could certainly be ported to the PS3 and Xbox 360.

Nintendo could give the discs away for free at stores and you could pop it into your machine of choice at home and buy and download decades worth of classic games. It’s probably a pretty decent bet that you’ll be able to copy many of these games over to the Nintendo DS for portable play and, as a result, Nintendo could see a huge upsurge in sales of the DS handheld to Xbox and Playstation owners, much like Apple has sold most of their iPods to people running Windows.

I know many of you are thinking that selling the games and not the console is antithetical to being a major player in the games industry, but the reality is Nintendo could use this trogan horse to pull users and revenue toward their own platforms. Selling classic games is really re-selling games. The development work is done, the marketing was paid for long ago, so selling these classics borders on simply printing money. Expanding that market to every console sold could lead to a massive windfall for Nintendo.