[quote name='furyk']The one thing you seem to be forgeting is the quality of the games offered through Live. Sure, Smash TV and Ultimate MK 3 are fun, but they're no where near the same level as something like Legend of Zelda or Sim City (the SNES version is still the best Sim City ever made). Sure, the Nintendo IPs are fueled by nostalgia so far, but there's a reason for that nostalgia. They're damn good games.
Take a long hard look at the arcade titles up on Live right now and think how many of them are worth the space on your hard drive let alone real points. Furthermore, these games that add content have had problems in the past. Frogger had absurd slow down as did Street Fighter 2. As for Gametap, it's a good service it's just got two things going against it. For one, playing a bunch of console games on a PC just doesn't measure up to hooking up a controller designed and laid out with that controller in mind. Second, the new Napster has and always will be beaten out by iTunes. Why is this? It's simple. People want to feel like they own their games (even if they're just "renting them according to US copyright laws"). Gametap doesn't offer that feeling.[/QUOTE]
Xbox Live arcade also has doom. Ok, so that's a few major classic games, Smash TV, UMK3, SF2, and Doom, not to mention original games like Geometry Wars, a game that could never see the light of day on the Wii due to its "old games only" policy.
As far as gametap, well that seem to be doing decently well, they've just launched their own games label. And you can't say a pay per month service is doomed to failure in the face of ala cart, Xbox Live beat out Sony's online service and may even rival PC online gaming in popularity, and cable TV is definitely not ala cart, though it does have premium additional channels) I'd say these retro games are more like cable TV. With music, people know what music they want and they explicitly download it and they may not listen to that many songs, so $1 per song may make more sense than $10 per month. But these old games are banking purely on nostalgia, and I doubt very many people will play any through till the end. Given the choice, I think people would rather pay $10 a month and 'channel surf' then pay $5 for a game called "Pinball" on the chance that they might like it despite the ancient graphics.
Of course, that service won't be gametap because it's on the PC, whereas the VC coming with Wii gives it a much higher chance of succeeding. (gametap fully supports gamepads btw, it works quite well with hooking up an xbox 360 gamepad, which are usb)
Besides, some roms are not perfect ports even on the best emulators.
According to reviews, neither are the VC games. In fact, they're worse than PC emulators. At least when Microsoft nickels and dimes customers, they put SOME effort into it.
It's kind of interesting to see Nintendo rerelease the same old games unchanged over and over, especially ones that have updated versions. Why release the original Legend of Zelda over and over, when there was an updated remake of it for the SNES in Japan? Why Mario 64 without the new levels and textures from Mario 64 DS?
So far, a large amount of the current VC games have been released...
On their original console.
As pack in titles in Animal Crossing or something else on the Cube.
As e-reader cards.
As GBA carts selling for full price.
And now as VC games. You know Nintendo, you don't have to go in chronological order of when the games were actually released. Nobody cares about NES games prior to Super Mario Bros, I certainly wasn't itching to play Urban Fighter.
ed up isn't it? 
