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Nintendo Confirms Free Online Play For Wii
Via Gamasutra, an interview in USA Today with Nintendo's Reggie Fils-Aime confirms that the Wii's online component will be free to play. The outspoken Nintendo advocate says "We will offer online-enabled games that the consumers will not have to pay a subscription fee for. They'll be able to enjoy that right out of the box. The Wii console is going to be Wi-Fi enabled, so essentially, you'll be able to plug it in and go. It won't have hidden fees or costs."
Let's make something clear though - the highly anticipated Virtual Console (which is able to download and play NES/Genesis/SNES/N64 games) will not be free. The pricing hasn't been released yet, but current estimates are $5 to $10 for a game. I would also hope that browsing these games would be free as well (unlike Xbox Live Arcade, where you must first pay for XBL and then pay again for XBLA games)
This announcement is for games like Mario Kart Wii or (please God let this be true) Super Smash Brothers Wii. Those games will be free, and that's what Reggie was talking about.
Network encryption on the DS is done in software, not hardware. Each title comes with its own code for managing the wifi connection.
The developers of Mario Kart DS were not able to implement anything more secure than WEP in that title without affecting playability. So that game does not support WPA and never will. It's not unreasonable, though, that later titles, once devs learn to make better use of the system -- or titles like the Opera browser in which frame-perfect network synchronization is not as critical -- may support additional forms of encryption.
Myself, I just locked down my wireless router to require WEP and only accept traffic from the MAC addresses of the wireless gear I own. It seems a fair compromise eto me.