Here in Canada, incumbent providers of TV happen to be the primary source for Internet access as well, and as such they've been doing everything in their power (unsuccessfully I might add) to make Netflix more difficult and less attractive for customers.
However, I think it's pretty clear (with Netflix's success) that the future of TV is going to be delivered in a new way. Cable and Satellite provider's days are numbered if they don't adapt. I don't need to rehash the commercial success Netflix has been, suffice it to say, they are doing very well!
I'm wondering how long until someone has the courage to try to do something similar for games, and I'd argue Nintendo is probably in the best position to make something like this an easy commercial success.
If I had to guess, I'd say one of the biggest pains Netflix has to deal with is negotiation their content licenses , and this would undoubtedly the primary issue facing anyone who wanted to build a Netflix for video games.
Nintendo however, could have a pretty easy go of it. One of the primary strengths of Nintendo's offering has always been the very strong first party support they bring to the table. So right out of the gate, they could have a very strong offering.
Would you be willing to pay $9.99 a month for access to a large library of Nintendo first party titles say 2 years and older? I would take that offer in a heartbeat myself, and I'm sure many others would as well.
Netflix's meteoric rise to success has been thanks to their revolutionary way of approaching content and that's some pretty compelling evidence that that a similar video game related offer would work very well, provided the content hurdle could be over-come.
Of course, there would be some technical issues that would need to be bridged, but if hackers have been able to reverse engineer emulators that would allow them to play old Nintendo games with ease on a PC. you would think it wouldn't be too hard for the originators of the technology to do something similar.
There's no arguing that delivery of content is changing, it may not be any time soon, but the future of content is certainly wholesale delivered by subscription rather than one off purchases . This will likely take years to finally arrive, it's progress no doubt slowed by entrenched incumbents who refuse to give up on the old way of doing things, but like it or not, this is the future of content delivery, Netflix and similar services have shown us that much.