I feel the risk here is that it's essentially trying to reconstruct the retail middle tier that exploded and seems to have been rejected by consumers already.
I mean, I think Nintendo is far better off trying to sign as many publishers as they can digitally since those are games that still seem to succeed with lower production values and publishers seem far more willing to take risks with them.
Quite a few of the major successes this year (Minecraft, Diablo 3, Guild Wars 2, Trials Evolution) have all been digital only or digital heavy titles, so I imagine publishers are more willing than ever to try this.