The VC is very evil. Don't log into it or you'll be reaching for your credit card and buying all your old favorites. I logged on last night to purchase "Punch Out!" Then played it for 2 hours to beat Mike Tys...Mr. Dream. VC is the devil. 

What I really wonder is how well VC is doing in Japan - in the US Im sure its doing gangbusters, but in a society where titles like Brain Training are big, can Zelda and Mario 64 survive?

I'd LOVE to see PSN vs. XBLA vs. VC sales charts. That'd be the coolest.

Just wanted to make a point about the VC... may or may not be obvious to people.

Nintendo do *not* make money when people buy a VC game - if anything this *costs* them money (anytime a 3rd party VC game is sold, they pay a license fee to the 3rd party).

They make money when people BUY points. The more point you have sitting around unused - the more money of yours Nintendo has in the "bank", earning interest - and doing whatever they want to do with.

...

So if you buy 5000pts - but only 1 VC game - Nintendo loves you! You gave them $50US, and might have cost them $1 ;)

Im waiting for Nintendo to do one (or both) of two things to suck MORE people into the VC madness:

1/ Have a "time limited" offer, where when you buy 5000 pts - you get a number for free (i.e. 1000)

2/ Offer a FREE game available on the VC - to get people online & using the service

Another EVIL strategy could be to make a game (i.e. Super Mario Bros, or even Mario Bros) worth 100 (or even 1) points. So it basically costs 'nothing' to buy, but still encourages everyone to purchase some points before they get the freebie.

(not sure about the costs involved, but Im fairly certain Nintendo has made somewhere between 50m-100m in revenue from the VC to date). 

my estimate is 5 million sold.

One way or another Nintendo is making money off of all VC sales. Some more then others.They wouldn't be charging us if they weren't.

Most likely they wont make the money until the games are actually bought, ie XBLA.

On XBLA, each item is given a ratio of MS's profit (ie, server fees + gluttony money) and the developer's income. Once the transaction is made, MS then gives the company a ratio.

IE, Street Fighter 2HF sells 100,000 copies at 1200 MS points, or $14USD. Capcom makes 70% of the income due to coding and certing through MS on their own, MS sends them $980,000 for those units sold, and keeps the 420,000 for themselves.

Now obviously SF2 has sold far more (around 500k or more), but it should be a similar structure for these games. I doubt, however, that porting old IPs is as expensive as porting them to XBLA due to certification and such.

SF2 has sold more than 500k on Live Arcade?

Today, more details about that meeting surfaced. Accordingly, Satoru Iwata divulged information about how online service Virtual Console (VC) is going. While he refused to give a detailed breakdown for titles and virtual platforms, Iwata did say that a total of 3.3 million games have been downloaded worldwide through the service as of now.
http://wii.qj.net/More-on-Iwata-3-3M-downloaded-VC-titles-and-3M-software-target/pg/49/aid/90775

alot low than i thought.