i disagreed with the myth that backward compartibility is not a crucial feature as i bought the Wii partly because it plays GC games, and know for a fact most Wii users are not past GC owners judging from the message boards on Gamefaqs and the sudden surge of GC game prices on the second hand market.

it may not matter much for Sony as they are gunning for their past customers whom probably owned a PSOne & PS2 before this (i still think it's a grave mistake to leave it out for the 40GB model) but for Nintendo who aims to capture the non-gamer community, it's dead crucial.