Downloadable Content For Wii, Pay And Play

Today during his panel, Takashi Aoyama, Group Manager for the Network Administration Group of Nintendo revealed that the company will soon be allowing Wii games to have downloadable addons.  The addons would be paid for with Wii Points and will be available for both WiiWare and store bought disc games.  No details on how users would store these addons was announced however.

The other news Mr. Aoyama announced was the introduction of, "Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection Pay And Play." This service is on a game by game basis and will have a red logo on the box to indicate that it will cost additional.  No games were announced, but Mr. Aoyama said that this would only happen to certain games.

I’m fairly shocked with this move since Nintendo has always been touting their free service from day one.  I wonder what type of confusion this will create with normal consumers, even in light of the red logo being introduced.  Would you pay to play a game?  More importantly, how do you think Nintendo will address the rising concern about storage on the Wii?