Still a long way away.
Since the launch of the Wii U, there's been a lot of hype and speculation about the future of the Virtual Console service. Even eight months into the release, the prospects are still very much uncertain. Nintendo tides over most people with news about moving Wii to Wii U, MiiVerse compatibility, GamePad play, and the like. Titles move over at a snail's pace. Why is this? To keep interest flowing consistently? For better long-term profits? Both, most likely. But a huge issue always comes to my mind whenever someone brings up the Virtual Console: the inclusion of GameCube titles.
Without a doubt, the GameCube can be placed into the category of a "legacy console". It's twelve years old and three console generations past. Even the later model Wii took out GameCube readability. So no issue in terms of it being "not old enough." Even when the Wii U was announced, there was excited whisperings of GameCube games being available for download.
But (and I know Nintendo is already moving towards a proposed solution), the internal memory is meager at best when compared to even last-generation consoles. Retail games take up a large amount of space, and even with the Deluxe Set, your internal memory is full before you can blink. eShop titles take up less space, but with consistent updates and patches, they quickly grow in size as well. The Basic Set (8 GB) is sitting on shelves gathering dust while the Deluxe Set (32 GB) is constantly in demand, but it's still not enough. Nintendo introduced the ability to connect an external hard drive to your console for additional storage space. This "solution" was, I feel, a short-term fix to a long-term problem. Even after it was hastily introduced, updates came quite often to improve and expand upon it. The whole thing reeked of afterthought.
With E3 upon us and the holiday season coming up shortly afterwards, Nintendo has to have some kind of hardware solution in their bag of tricks. Releasing consoles in a variety of colors only goes so far, and can only distract the consumer for so long. Even now, it was just announced that a 32 GB version will be released in White as well as Black. So what? That doesn't fix the underlying problem.
There is a possibility that Nintendo will release their own external hard drive. This will allow them to fix their initial faux pas while at the same time making money off of it. To sway people to their side further (other than just having an official "Nintendo brand Wii U External Hard Drive"), they could offer some included software/game/DLC/etc.
Another option (and this is the one people want the most) could be releasing another batch of consoles with a bigger stockpile of internal memory right off the shelf. If I can buy a used Xbox 360 with 320 GB storage space or a PS3 with a 500 GB storage space, why shouldn't I have the option to buy a Wii U with more than 32 GB? Would it cost too much?
Thus, we hit another roadblock. The GamePad replacement price has been valued by Nintendo at approximately $150 (It is not being sold as a solo item yet, it is only available as a replacement by Nintendo directly). Yet, the whole Basic Set is priced at $300. Could this mean that the base console itself is only valued at $150 by Nintendo? That's cheap. So what if Nintendo says, "Hey, let's release a Wii U with lots of memory." The only problem is, everyone who already bought their console is stuck with 32 GB max, and they sure as hell don't want to buy a new one that is going to cost even more than they paid the first time. And Nintendo can't sell a base console by itself for cheaper than a full set, because many games need the GamePad to function. You can't return only part of your purchase.
Or can you?
Since Nintendo has recently started selling refurbished hardware firsthand, why don't they make some sort of offer where you can send in your unit, have it upgraded with all your data transferred over, and then send it back to you? Since you won't need a new GamePad or anything, it can be done for a way smaller fee than buying some bundle brand new. All you would have to pay for is the price to upgrade your internal memory. Then it gets sent back with all your data intact, since Nintendo is doing it themselves and can easily navigate their own security measures (which is a big deal to them, for obvious reasons). This way, people that jumped on the purchase right away can have just as much storage space as people buying the upgraded console off the shelves brand new. And since Nintendo would then have consoles with less storage space that had been sent in, they could offer them, refurbished, at a way lower price. There would definitely be consumers that would not need that large amount of space, and the lower price would most likely sway them even further.
The increased storage space would mean that there would be no problem in people downloading lots of Virtual Console stuff directly to their Wii U, which also means there's way less of a chance of people passing around software through illegal means, which scares Nintendo to death. It's way easier to stick something on a tiny, portable hard drive and take it somewhere else to fiddle around than to pick up your whole Wii U setup and drag it around behind you. So Nintendo kills a lot of birds with one stone.
Bringing us back to the main focus of this post: GameCube games on the Virtual Console. NES, SNES, and N64 titles do not take up that much space. N64 would be the most, and that has a max of 64 MB. With only those options (aside from Genesis, Turbo-Grafx, etc.), you're not filling up even the Wii's internal memory any time soon. And since the Wii U is such a big step up in terms of storage, no way you're filling it up with those. However, Nintendo realized they had hit a huge snag after offering full, new retail titles to be downloaded on the Wii U without fully considering the space requirements. GameCube games are the same way. With a maximum disc capacity of 1.5 GB, you're looking at a lot of space used up just for GameCube titles.
Bottom line is, Nintendo needs to open up that space, and I think the "send in, upgrade, send out" model is their best bet. They aren't going to move ahead with something that takes up a lot of space, but requires a non-Nintendo supplier. They want to, logically, have control of their own products and services. So until that happens, GameCube games on the Virtual Console are not going to be a high priority. If they are announced before some sort of storage increase, I will be slightly surprised.
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