No one has more value in their back catalog than Nintendo. Huge numbers of gamers remember and love their favorite NES and Super NES games; the ability to buy and play those games on the Wii without having to hook up old hardware or blow into cartridges was a huge selling point for Nintendo's new system. How well are people responding? Nintendo has just sent word that since launch, 4.7 million games have been downloaded from the service, which means every hour the company sells 1,000 games through the Virtual console. Since there are no demos, each one of those games is a sale.

The top five games people have been grabbing? There are no surprises here, people still love Mario.

1. Super Mario Bros. (NES)
2. Super Mario 64 (N64)
3. Mario Kart 64 (N64)
4. Super Mario World (SNES)
5. The Legend of Zelda (NES)

Nintendo's ability to get people to rebuy its games is amazing; even if every one of the 4.7 million games sold was at the $5 price point, it would have made $23.5 million from the Virtual Console, and we know that's at an absolute minimum. This is also nearly pure profit, as the cost of moving these tiny files and keeping the spartan online store open are relatively small.

Nintendo has also revealed that Zelda II is coming to the service on June 4.

With hardware sales through the roof and the success of the Virtual Console, the Wii is more than a machine that prints money. Now it's almost like a machine that makes machines that print money.