I was wondering, so when you download a Wii game, does it download directly into the Wii console?  Does that mean it will be impossible to exchange (with other players) or backup or save virtual games?
Does anyone know??

cheers,

-avatar!

I don't think the details have been confirmed but the impression I got was that they are downloaded directly to the console and you can't move them.

Storage wise Nintendo kept saying (or the press keeps interpreting them that way) you can connect any USB mass storage device to the Wii, so it would be odd if "virtual" games could only be saved to the limited internal space. Let's wait until all about the virtual console is revealed (should be in less than 5 months now).

That would be ideal, but in that case how would Nintendo keep people from copying virtual games?  Having it stored internally makes more sense from a comercial point of view, but then that stinks in terms of having it transferable!  Hopefully Nintendo thought of this...

cheers,

-avatar!

I imagine that the games will have some sort of key in place to have them playable only on one Wii system or something.  My biggest concern at this point is how virtual console and wifi stuff is going to work on my system if I choose to get it modded instead of buying two Wiis like I have two Gamecubes and two PS2s... (yeah, Gamecubes were easily modded but I couldn't resist a really good deal on a Tales green system...  >_<)

I'd rather download old NES games and store them in my pants.

Schwiing!

Regarding the region lock-out (for which you'd need to mod a console if not for "backups"), did Nintendo already state whether they will put it in their Wii console as well or not (considering that Sony already stated they want to abolish game related region lock-outs in PS3)? After the clever use of system based language selection in the region lock-out free DS I'm wishing them to do the same with Wii...

The only info I've seen regarding region lock on the Wii is Planet Gamecube's Q&A section, where the editors stated pretty flatly that the system would be region locked.  I don't know where they got that information, though.  I wonder if it would even be possible to have it region free, what with the fact that Gamecubes even format your memory card if you put in one from the wrong region...

That seems possible, but does anyone know how this works for XBLA games?  Microsoft requires XBLA games to be 64MB or less so they can fit on a memory card and those memory cards are portable.  Perhaps the content is simply copy-protected instead of key-locked so that it can be played on multiple systems but not transferred between storage devices.  Anyone here own an X360 that can confirm this?