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This one gets a little byzantine, so stick with me. Cubed3 recently reported on an interview originally conducted over at Game Informer. The man in the interviewee's seat was John Lee, Hudson Entertainment's director of marketing.
Mostly what they're talking about is Hudson and its latest releases -- things like why Bomberman Act Zero didn't fly so well with either Western or Japanese audiences or the problems inherent in bringing Japanese-only titles (whose development houses may now have split up or skipped town) to the Virtual Console in an English-readable format.

Here's the interesting bit, though. Near the end of the interview, Lee is asked point-blank about whether Hudson might be considering developing a new Bonk game for release over the Wii's VC. Here's the response, verbatim:

"Well, the VC was specifically designed to bring back classic games, not to introduce new content. So to answer your question specifically: No. However, in the future, you should rephrase that question to: Are there any plans to launch original content on some downloadable service on the Wii, and you might get a different answer."

So -- obviously Hudson Entertainment knows something we don't here. Does Lee's comment mean that there are plans in the works for a virtual console-like channel of some kind for the Wii, designed to distribute recently developed games in the manner of the Xbox Live Marketplace or the Sony PlayStation 3 Store?

Wii might not be the heftiest graphical powerhouse on the market today, but downloadable games like Castle Crashers or flOw honestly don't require that much heavy lifting to run smoothly. The existence of such a channel on the Wii would surely mean engagement for the Big Three on one more battlefront in the already acrimonious "console wars." Good news for small game developers sure -- but the erosion of one more point of differentiation for the major players. Let the bare-knuckled fighting for downloadable exclusives begin!

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That would be friggin awesome. Good find!

Awesomeness! Real nice Find!

Thank you Gentlemen

Heh, all I want is for OoT to come out on the VC!

maybe somthing to put in the wiiware section of the shop channel

IGN just posted this article:

That basically predicts the coming of the system that I know was mentioned before. Nintendo did talk about a way down the road that fledgling companies could make games for the downloadable VC that would be cheaper and take less developing times. I know if the software comes out to the masses, I will be one of the ones taking some time to develop games for the VC. Let's just cross our fingers this system is limited to those with loads of cash and us freelancers can get in on it.

actually IGN's Matt and Bozon were making a game for the VC but said there waiting for other developpers to send stuff out that's new first. They talked about it in there Podcasts.

Portal'd

Good find indeed. Yeah i had heard some speculation by, i think it was Matt and Bozon at IGN about a possible seperate channel for new games, as well. And they've hinted at knowing some stuff they're not allowed to announce as well, so I'm happy to see this interview to solidify that prospect.

I agree with jonathanober to about the availablity of the developers' kits for wii. I'd love to develop some stuff that I could offer as downloadable to the wii. What i wonder is what kind of games you could send through that service-- size-wise..? full-fledged wii games wouldn't really be possible.. but maybe SNES-era style games with wii or Classic controls, glorified flash games..? I don't really know about that aspect, how much access the developer's kits will give you to the system.
And how difficult it is to actually program the motion control aspects..?

They best utilize a rating system for the new game download service, making it easier to find the gems among the slap-dash stuff.

Oh, and for the love of god, DEMOS! I doubt people will be willing to dive in blind to these unknown games. Also having demos would also lessen the amount of shoddy games put out there. If people can try new games, then that encourages more quality product to be produced in order to hook gamers during their trial. Without trial demos, i could see a lot of crud being made, just in an attempt to gain some kind of profit off of overly trusting gamers falling for a glitsy cover with half baked content.