and for those saying "why is it now profitable" my honest guess is that cost in maintaining said infrastructure is now low enough and the online "bullet point" is now important enough that the extra copies they sell from online probably make them more than they put out on the infrastructure every month... i.e. they "profit" from the online.
of course I really don't know, just offering up a possibility. I think the one thing that can definitely be concluded though is that if Nintendo is doing it, they are making money from it.