More Bad ideas:
Pokemon MMO
Bungie + Blizzard staff + Touchscreen = Myth IV
Star Road:
A Premium Online service. All standard Cafe games are free to play online, but some third parties may want to have have additional subscriptions (like PSO2, in theory). However, rather than paying these companies directly, there is a single, unified currency managed by Nintendo, called "Star Coins". You have two options; buy Star Coins via credit card or Coin Cards at retail outlets, or you subscribe to 'Star Road'.
Subscribers to Star Road are essentially on a Star Coins-per-week plan; your subscription gives you x amount of coins at the start of each week as long as you're paying for the service. You can then decide how you want to spend those coins; buying Virtual Console games, "CafeWare", micro-transaction content, DLC or to pay for subscription based games. This could also theoretically include a Netflix subscription paid with Nintendo's virtual currency.
For example, if you subscribe to Star Road for $5 a month, you get 10 coins a week (equivalent to buying a 40 Coins in the store at $5 a card) as long as you're a subscriber. If the exchange rates are the same, why bother with a subscription service?
A Star Road subscription also has a Game Rental service built in; you can download any Virtual Console or Cafeware game, one per week. If you keep the same game for multiple weeks, you enter a 'Rent to Own' program where, if you keep the game for a number of weeks equivalent to the price of the game, it's yours as if you bought it.
Another benefit is the Star Cafe, an exclusive multiplayer gaming section with a variety of subscriber only games, from board games to arcade classics. Some of these games could be like contests, which could theoretically give away prizes like a free rental plan for a month, extra Star Coins, avatar rewards, etc.
Non-subscribers could also play Star Cafe games, but they wouldn't be able to enter for prizes and they might have fewer options on how they can play (for example, they couldn't make private game rooms, just join public ones).
In theory, parents could set the subscription up so their kids get a 'monthly allowance' to blow on new games and such, without ever having to go out and buy point cards or have their kids screwing with their credit cards. Kids can decide if they want to rent a game, buy it outright, or get new items for their characters. If they want to play a subscription based game, they can put some of their coin-per-month allowance towards that.
Basically, it's free like PSN, but you can pay for more extra features and get free Star Coins every week and a weekly VC/Cafeware rental while you're a subscriber. Of course, you can always just go out and buy Star Coins anytime you want, or set Star Road up to buy you additional coins each billing cycle.
In theory, some people might say "Why don't I get all of my coins at once?", but that's easily circumvented by just buying coins directly. The subscription is basically there to give lots of extra content and, hey, free coins to blow on stuff. And, again, nice for parents to give their kid an 'allowance'.
In theory, Nintendo also profits directly by having people buy subscriptions from them rather than cards from retailers. Maybe the cost of buying Star Coins isn't the exact same (maybe $5 only gets you 30 coins instead of 40 as you would get with a subscription). Obviously I'm just tossing this idea out there...
