Well, it is nice to hear Nintendo's stepping up to a much more adult form of networking and acknowledges they made a mistake and will learn from it. I can understand why they had such a locked down network before, parents do feel better knowing their kids are on a safe, controlled network. I'm not sure parents really find this such a priority anymore since they're so readily handing their kids devices with full net access, cameras, and messaging and walking away.
I don't like the sound of DLC and micropayments, but it isn't like everyone else isn't doing it too. At this point I think they'd lose developers by NOT offering a network capable of these things. I can only hope that Nintendo uses their DLC responsibly and uses it to improve games and not just half finish games. Maybe this can get them better 3rd party support as well.