Perhaps we are looking at the expiration of Nintendo's own exclusive publishing rights. We need to look at this realistically it has been over ten years since Nintendo published many of these games. Some of them have been out of production for longer then ten years. Eventually the publishing rights must return to the developer in whole. That said ten years sounds like a reasonable time frame. I doubt Microsoft would have purchased Rare if they never got publishing access to their property.
The rumor is very plausible. Microsoft has probably waited out the clock, and now they can reap the rewards by releasing their property free and clear on their console. There probably isn't a thing Nintendo could do about it either. After all these games belong to Microsoft now and not Nintendo. Anyway its probably in the fine print of the contract between Microsoft and Nintendo.
I wouldn't hold out much hope of seeing any of those games on the Virtual Console. Nintendo obviously couldn't obtain the rights, and its doubtful they would negotiate the rights with Microsoft. Microsoft would probably demand the right to provide Nintendo first party offerings on live. Which we know would never happen.
Anyway I expected something like this to happen eventually. For the above mentioned reasons. No publishing right is eternal after all they all expire eventually.
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