This report comes from a guy who knows a guy, so get your grains of salt ready, but it all does sound very reasonable, especially when you consider that Nintendo does have plans to expand the Wii U's virtual offerings beyond games.

According to forgetthebox.net, Nintendo is planning to make the Wii U an e-reader capable of downloading books, magazines, and more interestingly, strategy guides and instruction booklets. According to the blog, Nintendo is planning to allow the 3DS to share similar services. In fact, you may be able to download digital versions of magazines you are already subscribed to, and the system could download the latest issues as soon as they become available without any prompting from the user.

The idea of logging into the Virtual Console store and downloading games that come with an electronic version of the booklets that used to come with classic games is very exciting. Those little books used to be the closest I could get to a video game when I wasn't able to actually play them, and I have vivid memories of leafing through them and taking in what little story and hints they were able to add to the game.

This is all without confirmation from Nintendo, of course, but it all seems entirely possible.

Thanks to Brandon for the news tip!