Nintendo today announced the creation (and trademarking) of their WiiWare service, which will offer downloadable titles through the Wii Shop Channel.
WiiWare will, in the words of Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime, give indies "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. WiiWare brings new levels of creativity and value to the ever-growing population of Wii owners."
The news was first broken yesterday by Newsweek's N'Gai Croal, who was given the opportunity to speak with Fils-Aime about the service. Fils-Aime told Croal the only limitation on the service was the ESRB rating of the game itself—in keeping with policy, Nintendo would not publish AO-rated games—but beyond this, Nintendo would only be vetting software for bugs and compatibility, not acting as gatekeeper for which titles would be released. It's worth noting, however, that Nintendo will also be setting prices on the releases.
"The vision for WiiWare started back during the development of the Wii itself," Fils-Aime told Croal yesterday. "A couple of GDCs ago, Mr. Iwata hinted at downloadable content; that we wanted to help young, promising developers overcome the limitations of small budgets and team sizes to bring their games to the Wii." Asked about pricing for developer kits, Fils-Aime dismissed the notion that it would be a concern. "All our SDKs and dev tools are already—I don't want to call them inexpensive—they're darn near free to developers. This is unlike our competitors, where you have to spend a lot of money building high-res assets to be competitive. So in that sense, there's almost no cost to developers; the tools are already available at rock-bottom prices."
The service is set to launch in 2008. Although Croal apparently didn't ask why it's taken Nintendo so long, the Internet rumor mill has been in full force for some time, with commentary from publishers who had been expecting WiiWare to launch much sooner. Reasons cited include Nintendo needing time to work out how to pay third parties, and Internet speculation has revolved around the need to supplement Wii's otherwise paltry storage to support downloadable content.
WiiWare will, in the words of Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime, give indies "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. WiiWare brings new levels of creativity and value to the ever-growing population of Wii owners."
The news was first broken yesterday by Newsweek's N'Gai Croal, who was given the opportunity to speak with Fils-Aime about the service. Fils-Aime told Croal the only limitation on the service was the ESRB rating of the game itself—in keeping with policy, Nintendo would not publish AO-rated games—but beyond this, Nintendo would only be vetting software for bugs and compatibility, not acting as gatekeeper for which titles would be released. It's worth noting, however, that Nintendo will also be setting prices on the releases.
"The vision for WiiWare started back during the development of the Wii itself," Fils-Aime told Croal yesterday. "A couple of GDCs ago, Mr. Iwata hinted at downloadable content; that we wanted to help young, promising developers overcome the limitations of small budgets and team sizes to bring their games to the Wii." Asked about pricing for developer kits, Fils-Aime dismissed the notion that it would be a concern. "All our SDKs and dev tools are already—I don't want to call them inexpensive—they're darn near free to developers. This is unlike our competitors, where you have to spend a lot of money building high-res assets to be competitive. So in that sense, there's almost no cost to developers; the tools are already available at rock-bottom prices."
The service is set to launch in 2008. Although Croal apparently didn't ask why it's taken Nintendo so long, the Internet rumor mill has been in full force for some time, with commentary from publishers who had been expecting WiiWare to launch much sooner. Reasons cited include Nintendo needing time to work out how to pay third parties, and Internet speculation has revolved around the need to supplement Wii's otherwise paltry storage to support downloadable content.