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What do you want to hear first, the good news, or the bad news? I'll assume you said good. At the Game Developers Conference today, Nintendo project leader Takashi Aoyama announced that Wii titles in the future would support downloadable content. While this may have come late for games like Guitar Hero, and Smash Bros. it is welcome news none the less. Hopefully the service comes in time for the release of Harmonix's Rock Band.
Additional content will be available for both WiiWare and disc games to be paid in Wii Points. It is not known which future games will currently make use this new addition or if it will stem to the possibility of offering game patches on Wii. Something Nintendo learned the hard way with Twilight Princess and Fire Emblem.
Ready for the bad news? You may want to take a few minutes to prepare yourself.
Along with the awesome DLC announcement Nintendo felt it needed to even things out a bit and also let us know that there will be some upcoming WiFi Connection games with a "Pay and Play" feature. As the name suggests this means that this will have gamers subscribing to each separate title that makes use of this. To avoid confusing consumers games requiring a payment to play online will have a red "Pay and Play" icon on their boxes.
At the moment things aren't fully clear on how this will function and whether or not Wii owners will only have to pay for specific features (in the vein of downloadable content) or if any online play at all will require payment, and if it will be a one time payment or a subscription of some sort.
As a company that has always put forward its free online strategy it is a little strange to see something like this come from Nintendo, but if they expect people to pay for something they've already been getting for free then hopefully it means improvements to the way their online service functions.
