As we reported this morning, Nintendo has announced what it calls a game-creation service that will let developers (large and small) create new downloadable games that will be sold via the Wii Shop Channel. Full details inside.
Nintendo says WiiWare, oddly renamed 'Wii Software' for Europe, "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. You'd think they'd have one or two games ready though.
"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," said Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime. "WiiWare brings new levels of creativity and value to the ever-growing population of Wii owners."
Nintendo apparently announced the introduction of WiiWare at a private developers conference this week. It said that the reduced barriers to development will provide developers "the freedom to create and an inexpensive, clearly defined path to reach consumers". It then up to you to decide the next big thing.
WiiWare will be posted on the Wii Shop Channel. As with current Wii Shop Channel offerings, you'll need to redeem Wii Points to download content. It'll support a variety of pricing options and details of upcoming projects will be announced at a later date - maybe E3 in a few weeks?
In the meantime, check out our exclusive Wii Software Q&A, in which we get answers from Nintendo on everything you want to know about the new download service.
It's not like they didn't have this planned for ages so why is the wait so long? They already have a means of distributing the games, and surely it can't take that long to throw out a few small cheap games to start things off.
What I'm wondering though, is whether we'll be able to get trial versions of the games like XBLA rather than the current "if you don't like it, tough" attitude with the VC.
It's not like they didn't have this planned for ages so why is the wait so long? They already have a means of distributing the games, and surely it can't take that long to throw out a few small cheap games to start things off.
What I'm wondering though, is whether we'll be able to get trial versions of the games like XBLA rather than the current "if you don't like it, tough" attitude with the VC.
Wii Ware/Wii software already exists within the Wii Shop Channel, it just only has the Internet Channel and the Everybody votes Channel in it. The only news is that they're going to release games in it too. Personally I think it should be in another section of the Wii shop Channel, seperate from the Virtual Console and Wii Ware/Wii Software
And anyway, they announced that they wanted to do this AGES ago, so surely it shold be ready by now?!
There's still the issue of storage - which is something Nintendo must have considered.
Well i reckon it's gonna go like this. In a couple of weeks, at E3, Nintendo will announce some sort of memory add on (probably a hard drive) and that this also will not be available till Q1 2008. which will also coincide (maybe) with the release of Neo Geo games on ths VC.
All well and good but we still have to wait over six months for it. and I hate waiting. Hurry up Dammit!!
Wii Ware/Wii software already exists within the Wii Shop Channel, it just only has the Internet Channel and the Everybody votes Channel in it. The only news is that they're going to release games in it too. Personally I think it should be in another section of the Wii shop Channel, seperate from the Virtual Console and Wii Ware/Wii Software
And anyway, they announced that they wanted to do this AGES ago, so surely it shold be ready by now?!
Has anyone ever figured out why the damned Wii Shop Channel is so slow?
There's still the issue of storage - which is something Nintendo must have considered.
There are rumours that Nintendo are going to announce an external hard drive, likely at E3, so that would sort the problem of storage space out, although the thought of having an ugly add-on doesn't really appeal to me. It would have been far better had Nintendo allowed the use of 2 and 4GB SD cards to store and run downloadable games from rather than only allowing you to store stuff on them. They could easily fix that though with a firmware update.
Rumour has it that Nintendo didn't have enough dev kits to go around, so all of the big name developers and publishers nabbed the initial allocation, and now slowly the smaller developers will be receiving them.
I remember the indie development ideal being talked about in some of the first 'Revolution' conferences, so I'm glad it's finally fully confirmed after a slight confirmation a few months ago.
I do wonder how much of a company you have to have to develop titles for it though, as I think Microsoft require Live Arcade titles to come from companies, and Nintendo have been a bit of a restrictive publisher in the past (and funnily enough won't be so with these Wii Software titles). I'd like to have a go myself.
What Nintendo is proposing is the 'Long Tail' for gaming in the way this has been done for other forms of media. How might it damage its own software business? The lesson of the long tail is that the middle ground suffers: people want premium product or bargain basement, not the in-between stuff. I don't think there is a memory issue. By the time this launches, pricing for 4GB DS memory cards will probably be around Ł50 tops, and this is for compact games without lavish A/V production values.
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