Nintendo is forecasted to lose 240 million dollars the fiscal year we are currently in.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-17/nintendo-forecasts-net-loss-on-stagnating-sales-of-wii-u-games.html

5.6 million Wii Us multiplied by 5 dollars multiplied by 12 months is 336 million dollars.

Should Nintendo imitate Sony and Microsoft with their monthly fee?

Something like, get access to all NES, SNES, N64, Game Boy, GBA games for 5 dollars per month, and if you pay 2 more dollars you can keep the game you downloaded.

But then... Even more people wouldn't buy the wiiU

Yes, although I imagine the Wii U owners at this point are very hardcore Nintendo fans.

I proposed in my post something optional, no forced online fee, like you can choose to pay 5 dollars per month for all virtual console games, and you can keep a game you downloaded for 2 extra dollars.

I forgot about the 3DS owners, something like that could work for them too.

They should make sure the virtual console has all games one could want, and that the emulation is perfect.

Drop it to $3.99 a month and make it work on the 3DS too (so lets say 10 million subscribers all told ... obviously not every Wii U owner would have it) ... and yeah sure.

It probably would generate an additional $480 million in revenue for them yearly.

Personally, I hope Nintendo doesn't start to charge for online multiplayer. I pay enough in Xbox LIVE and PS+ subscriptions already.

Plus, Nintendo's consoles are, in general, focused on local multiplayer so a lot of people just wouldn't pay.

The idea of a + service that allows access to Virtual Console games isn't a bad idea, but it would have to be priced correctly. There are plenty of people who would gladly hand over $10 or $15 for a single Virtual Console game.

If they decide to charge for online, they better fix a lot of things first. Their network isn't even up to last gen standards.

I don't play my Wii U online anyway, so I certainly wouldn't pay the fee even if everything was behind its paywall.

thats one of the many reasons why Nintendo is awesome

they have almost no online presence as it is. They would need to focus a lot on online stuff in order to make something like this appealing to people. Clearly online has not been a priority for nintendo this gen, as their biggest games so far have only had local multiplayer...

So, to answer your question, I think at this point in time it would be a terrible idea for nintendo do something like this. They don't have the support or the infrastructure to do it. Maybe with Nintendo's next system they could do something like this, but as of right now, I say no.

Their online is absolutely worthless, why in the world would anyone pay for it?

All Nintendo current available first party games are local multiplayer. Hardly anyone plays online on the third party games. You'll be paying to play online and not be able to play online.

They could always charge for online when they release Super Smash Bros. I wouldn't play it online then though, because that's the only game I want to play online on the Wii U.  I'm not going to pay just to play online for one game.