WiiWare

By: Derek Yu

On: June 27th, 2007

No, it’s not a new line of clothing for babies. (Well, unless you want your babies to wear games produced for download onto Nintendo’s Wii Console.) We’re talking about Nintendo’s answer to XBox Live Arcade, baby.

“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.” (Link)

Thanks for the heads-up, Tennis!

Posted in Community, Developers, Wii

Benny

It’d be truly revolutionary if they released the SDK for free. But the miracle will never happen.
archimed

ugh. accidentally clicked on the link. maybe put it in big, red, flashing letters, whenever you’re forced to link to kotaku.
fish

hopefully, this will save the universe.
BenH

This is pretty interesting, I just hope its easier to get into developing for than XBLA (not the coding, the actually process of getting ON XBLA). That’s probably just wishful thinking though :/
BenH

My brains broken, why did I type “actually” instead of “actual” :I
PHeMoX

* XBLA (not the coding, the actually process of getting ON XBLA) *

That will always be a problem regardless of the platform… You have to convince MS or Nintendo or Sony that your game is “worth it” and we indies can usually forget about it when we don’t team up with a publisher that already has some titles on those platforms … it’s a shame really, there are some good casual and indie games that good really do well on these platforms ..
AdamAtomic

no one said it yet? oh come on…ooookay:

wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!
Shabadage

Hey they FINALLY said something more about it! Glad to hear it didn’t disappear into the abyss after the initiall rumbling abou t it about six months ago.

Wii stole it from Microsoft
DrDerekDoctors

My favourite thing about this is that the Wii uses OpenGL, I believe. :)
haowan

It doesn’t.
haowan

Sorry, should expand – although it might be similar, it’s definitely not GL.
ryan

so, these means aquaria for wii will happen?
raigan

how about this: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=14486
Dan MacDonald

Kenta Cho, the best game developer to ever pad everyone else’s pockets with money!
raigan

surely they’re not stealing the game..
jonathan mak

re: tumiki fighters:

does anyone else think that those weird triangles in the background, and the glowing on every object makes the game look worse? it seems all cluttered now.
oNyx

>Itâ€™d be truly revolutionary if they released the SDK for free.

I would be already happy if the sign up process would be less restrictive. How many indies have a dedicated office? Well, not many.

It’s sorta like Nintendo is mocking everyone with that fake low entry barrier (the devkit itself is pretty cheap).
http://www.garbageingamesout.com/ Brien

I too don’t understand Kenta Cho’s role in this this: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=14486

What does some developer in Iowa have to do with Tumiki Fighters?
haowan

KC releases all his games for free and says that if anyone wants to expand on them they’re free to do so. I think. I haven’t read his site in a while. He releases source for some of them too.

Now, that would probably mean that these guys are A-OK in what they’re doing, doesn’t make it right though.

Also, J-Mak: totally agreed, it’s pathetic half-assed clutter that doesn’t need to be there at all and just makes it look amateurish.
Dan

I sent NOA an email about their devkit. I told them that I was part of a team of students who were interested in producing a game for the Wii console. I recieved an email back saying that we would NEVER be able to produce a game and despite that they themselves said that independant developers could produce titles, only ESTABLISHED companies with years of making video games could only apply. If they changed their music now, it’s a surprise, but too late for us. And also too late for them to have one of our games on their system. Because of XNA, we’ve been looking at the Xbox 360 console. Too bad for Nintendo. They had a good idea, but then were to restrictive with it…. so why even announce the availability of their stupid devkit in the first place. I have a feeling that the Wii will be shortlived. My two cents anyway.
TMO

CAVE STORY!
WII!
CAVE STORY!
WII!