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WiiWare
By Corvus | June 27, 2007
I’ve tried to write this post about four times now and keep typing things like, “Booyah!” and, “boy-eee!” I’m not normally one for utterance such as that, so here’s the official press release…
SANTA MONICA, Calif., June 27, 2007 – The search for the next ingeniously ground-breaking video game has begun. At a private developers conference this week, Nintendo announced the introduction of WiiWare™, a game-creation service that will allow developers large and small to create new downloadable video game content for sale by Nintendo through the Wii Shop Channel of the hot Wii™ home video game system. WiiWare paves the way for smaller, more creative games to make their way to the public at lower prices, without any inventory risk to developers. The first WiiWare content will launch in early 2008.
“Independent developers armed with small budgets and big ideas will be able to get their original games into the marketplace to see if we can find the next smash hit,” says Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime. “WiiWare brings new levels of creativity and value to the ever-growing population of Wii owners.”
The possibilities for WiiWare are limited only by the imaginations of developers. WiiWare provides game creators a simple method by which they can get their games to the public. This approach, combined with the remarkable motion controls of the Wii Remote™ and Nunchuk™, will give birth to fresh takes on established genres, as well as original ideas that currently exist only in developers’ minds. The reduced barriers to development provide developers the freedom to create and an inexpensive, clearly defined path to reach consumers who will ultimately determine which game will become the Next Big Thing.
WiiWare will be posted on the Wii Shop Channel. As with current Wii Shop Channel offerings, users will redeem Wii Points™ to download content. It will support a variety of pricing options. Details about that and upcoming projects will be announced at a later date. For more information about Wii, visit Wii.com.
You had better believe I’ll be keeping my eye on this program!
Tagged:Games, Tech. | 6 Comments »
June 27th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Mine got destroyed by Blogger and I haven’t had a chance to get back to it. Very exciting, indeed, but extremly light on the details.
June 27th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
Hmmm. It actually doesn’t look so good for indies. Check out the comment from caseyodonnell here:
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=453470
June 27th, 2007 at 4:01 pm
That seems to be an odd (and pessimistic) take on things.
People wanted to believe WiiWare would be akin to XNA, but I don’t think I ever heard from Nintendo that it would be. The Wii dev kit is very aggressively priced, so there’s no questioning that it’s probably well within a modest budget of an indie studio that already has legal counsel, an office, etc. After all, you’ll at least have to be able to afford a rating for your game before it’ll be considered. It seems to me that Nintendo is lowering their infamously high barrier to entry, but not dropping it altogether.
That being said, I wouldn’t be surprised if once the first round of WiiWare offerings make a great impression on the public, if there wasn’t a special program launched just to support WiiWare.
Those development requirements he posted down the thread are from some time ago and do not necessarily apply to WiiWare dev.
Anyway, while I respect a cautious approach, I have yet to see anything that warrants the skepticism evident at the end of that link. It sounds like the result of inappropriately high expectations to me.
June 27th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
“Those development requirements he posted down the thread are from some time ago and do not necessarily apply to WiiWare dev.”
Except Reggie said that they’re not going to cut the costs from the current devkit prices. It seems pretty cut-and-dry to me.
June 27th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
True enough, Darius. Although I didn’t re-read those just now, I thought I remembered from previous reads that they listed other requirements which don’t seem in accord with the stated intent of WiiWare.
So, I guess I’m just saying that I think people’s expectations are playing a very large part in their enthusiasm (or lack thereof). No offense to your friend Casey intended.
June 27th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Oh, and I fully realize that companies frequently do things that seem contradictory and inconsistent!