Clubskill has pointed out an interesting kink in Nintendo’s next-gen plans. Recently, the British government passed a bill outlawing “standby” mode for appliances, after a government report found that roughly 8% of Britain’s energy use was accounted for by devices sitting around doing nothing. The problem for Nintendo is that the bill would appear to be directly at odds with the WiiConnect-24 service, which is supposed to be able to download new content to the Wii (among other things) while you’re not playing.

Obviously, UK gamers are currently going to be the only ones having to deal with this restriction for the time being (and we’re not even sure how it will play out yet… perhaps Nintendo can strike some sort of deal?). Still, with energy usage becoming an ever-greater concern, maybe this is a harbinger of things to come?