Why can't it just work like a cell phone? Everybody has a phone number but you assign a name to that number and never see the actual number ever again. When someone calls you, all you see is their name and and you call someone else, all you see is there name. The number is there and is used everytime, but it's basically hidden from the end user.

Friend codes were stupid anyway.

I think it was a safety thing on Nintendo's behalf to try and protect the children from sex pests that may be stalking the mario karts lobbys. Perhaps Nintendos's realised that there's no threat anymore nows older gamers dont use their Wii's anymore and it's only a kiddie console so they decided to relax their rules .

I honestly think that there will be a lot of changes towards online, storage etc as Wii Ware has proved that people are intersted in online services and thet new SDHC and loading straight from it, these new friend code rules and more effort going into Wii Ware rather than VC proves to me that this / next year is all about the core gamer, online and targeting gamers with demo channels etc as they have the casuals hooked already.

One small step for GH - one giant leap Wii owners!!