Roger

Well I had the original DS phat and then the Lite which had a "water" accident and then another Lite and at some point will upgrade to a new generation DS with larger screens. Those changes are every two to three years, so the "rental" period effectively amounts to that.

On the Wii front I had to send it in for repairs when SSMB came out because the drive was having difficulty reading discs. Nintendo's policy at the time (thankfully changed since then) was that if they had to replace the console then you'd likely lose everything. My Wii is now completely out of warranty and is intermittently not outputting red any more and will likely need to be replaced. Again this means the downloaded content has amounted to 2/3 year "rentals".

What do you think will happen when the next gen Wii comes out in terms of transferring your content?

I bought two virtual console games a few years ago and haven't bought any more, nor any WiiWare nor will I get DSi stuff. The reason is simply because I am not prepared to do a rental at those prices. The downloadable content is a rental until you can move it as you upgrade/change/damage devices. It needs to belong to me and not some random device.

What they could also do is stop subsidizing handsets - you just pay for them outright and then own them. If they did this then the $50/month is ok as none of it would be towards handsets.