Something is rather amiss with Virtual Console offerings over the last few months.  In Japan, they've remained their usual steady pace of 2 or 3 games a week.  In Europe, they also usually get out 2 or 3 a week.  But in North America, it's a rare week that we see 2 offerings; usually we see only 1 a week lately, and usually they're games that are not being asked for by popular demand at all.

 What is going on?  Is NoA having some sort of issue with getting rights to games, even to their own games?  Is this some half-hearted attempt to either promote WiiWare or to allow the European VC to "catch up" to the NA one?  Does anybody have any idea what's gotten into their heads?  It's fairly obvious that Virtual Console is proving itself to be profitable, so why are they so hesitant to release more titles and let it print money for them on the landmass that loves to buy video games the most?  If anybody has any inside information, or has contacted Nintendo about this, I'd be quite interested to know what their reasoning is for neglecting Virtual Console so heavily of late.

I am speculating, but my guess is they're trying to get WiiWare firmly-established in the consumer mind and, to that end, they're rather limiting VC releases of late to steer those dollars in that direction.

It definitely isn't a rights issue: several publishers have *tons* of games ready to go, but it comes down to Nintendo posting them as they are considered the publisher for all VC games.

Thank you! Nintendo of America is starting to piss me off with this. And they're neglecting WiiWare just as much. Not only are they not releasing games for either platform, they don't even tell us (or the developer!) when the release dates are.

Alright, I've vented. To the heart of the matter. I think Nintendo thinks that by releasing only one game for each platform per week, they can focus everyone's attention on just the one game (per platform), thereby increasing sales. They're probably right, mind you, and by not telling us in advance people are less likely to save their Wii Points for the game they want and know is coming. So it's good business sense.

It's also real f***ing annoying.

If it is a WiiWare promotion scheme, then why is only the North American branch doing it? And do they really think it's going to have any effect at all on WiiWare? I can't imagine very many people are going to opt for a $10 N64 game or $8 SNES game over a $5 or $10 WiiWare game, when the WiiWare game is a.) new, and b.) likely using the Wii's controls to their utmost instead of being an old-school game that uses non-motion controls. I just find that explanation to be a bit too illogical business-wise.

Yeah, this really, really sucks. I would think that the WiiWare is the answer, but that doesn't really explain why the drought is limited (mostly) to North America.

One possibility that's probably full of holes: Nintendo is concerned about storage space, and they're limiting releases until the issue is resolved one way or another, because they're afraid that if they release too many games while space is limited sales will then suffer (games disappear from the VC new release section after a while, remember, and it's possible that they get a lot of traffic from those links).

As for the NA-only issue, perhaps we tend to download more, and thus have less space per capita than the Europeans or Japanese.

Along the same lines, maybe the think that less competition per week means higher sales for each release? Games stay in the new release section longer, fewer menus to click through, etc.

Maybe it was some NoA guys idea.  Each branch is independantly incharge of promoting it's titles i believe.

I definitely think that somebody should fire off an e-mail to Nintendo of America's customer support department to ask what the actual reasoning is behind not releasing Virtual Console games at the same pace as Europe or Japan. They can't seriously expect, in this day and age, that nobody would realize that they're short-changing us compared to the other branches of the company. Especially for downloadable items like Virtual Console; if anything, you should expect a higher level of awareness from your customers when the content's online, not a lower one.

As to why it's just North America, I believe that each region might be getting some autonomy when releasing VC and WiiWare games (for once), and for whatever reason NoA has decided that this maximizes profits. But I disagree with your second assertion. I believe that while VC and WiiWare customers have a lot of overlap, there's still some separation. It appears that a lot of people really like retro gaming, and are perfectly happy to plunk down a few bucks to relive the old days for a few hours. WiiWare games won't permit that: they're new games. That those games might be new, and actually utilize the wiimote, is irrelevant: VC purchasers are there precisely because they want to play what's old, not what's new.

There are many types, it's true. Those who are only interested in WiiWare, those who are only interested in Virtual Console, those who are interested in both in varying degrees... I just don't see any advantage in sacrificing support of one or both when they're profitable. They only stand to make more money by releasing more titles, why are they holding back?

I want Mario Golf 64, Mario Tennis and the original Mario Party to hit the virtual console!