Nintendo was never too keen on the idea of demos, I think they're more comfortable with doing that on handhelds.

On consoles they'd rather sell the demos somehow, because they consider it content. And frankly it is.

Nintendo likes to operate outside of the realm of time. They think 50, 100 and 500 years in advance. They'd like to get involved in things that are completely sustainable and/or timeless as much as possible. I don't think they will do something just because everyone else is doing easily.

Even today they said they wouldn't go online with the Gamecube and they didn't, technically they're strictly on the paradigm of wireless internet. Sure you can get adaptors but their internet has a wireless identity. They have not adopted the wired internet paradigm.

Nintendo has a download limit that is ~40MB. The reason for the limit is they believe that anything bigger will take too long to download. To make a decent demo you probably need at least 100-200MB, and the internal flash memory is only 512MB. Even if you were to download directly to a SD card, you still need free space on the internal flash to actually play the demo.

So while they could technically offer demos, I don't think they could make demos unless they were incredibly simple like Punch-Out!! (1 static environment, with 2 characters and a couple screenshots and some music)

actually they could make wii demos that would take less than 40mb. most psp demos have less than 20-25mb and i'm talking here about big games like shooters and rpgs. it's possible but nintendo would have to make new channel for it and it takes time and money to make demo so not many developers would be willing to do this.

Man, it is a shame they don't allow demos. I feel like they give you a lot of opportunity to play stuf for free :)

Seems like half the Wii owners I know are already doing that...

so, as has been explained before, wii game demo's would be possible, but not practical. they would be extreamely limited space-wise, and for some reason, nintendo doesn't like doing demo's on consoles.

one thing they did a little during the gamecube days that i would like to see more of is offereing demo discs included in retail nintendo games. mario kart doubledash! had a bonus disc with like 5 demos and a dozen game trailers. i loved them to try that again.

What? I'm not sure what you mean exactly... but there is a wired ethernet adapter for the gamecube.

On the topic of demos, I'm not sure they serve their purpose. While the x360 has mandatory demos, some are so short or so awful that they actually steer you away from buying them. In practice, mandatory demos don't really translate into much besides a talking point for x360 fans when you only get 5-10 minutes of gameplay and you don't get a decent feel for the full version of the game.

Even with PSN demos, one demo has taken me off the fence into buying territory, but many other games I avoided entirely because the game just wasn't that good. Even good games like Valkyria Chronicles and Uncharted had awful demos so the whole try before you buy thing doesn't always work outr. Even though I do enjoy playing demos, those demos very rarely translate into sales.

I say wii owners aren't really missing out on much by not having demos.