WiiWare - The Official Announcement - Press Release

Wii

WiiWare - The Official Announcement

June 27, 2007, 8:26 am EDT
Total comments: 18

Independent developers will begin offering downloadable games for the Wii in early 2008.

NINTENDO'S WIIWARE PAVES THE WAY FOR FRESH GAMES, COOL CONSUMER EXPERIENCES

Nintendo Sets a New Paradigm: One Game Can Still Make a Difference

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.

Talkback

NeoThunderJune 27, 2007

How are they going to convince people to buy these games that people have never heard of. They are going to need to have some demo method or game video preview to sell it.

NWR_insanolordJ.P. Corbran, Community ManagerJune 27, 2007

I hope by then Nintendo will have some kind of way to add to the available memory for the Wii. I know I'm in the minority at this point, but I've nearly filled the built-in memory with my VC purchases. In another six months I think a lot more people will have reached that point. I'm assuming all it would take is a firmware update to allow the Wii to play things directly off an SD card or perhaps a USB flash drive plugged into the back. They would also need to allow for more than 4 pages of channels, or possibly a way to organize VC games into individual sets accessible through single channels to open up some space.

At my current state I have ~150 free blocks and 8 open channels, and that's after getting rid of a few things. I really don't understand why Nintendo hasn't done the presumably simple firmware update, as the way it's set up the only thing I can do with the extra space is fill it with things I buy from them.

Come on Nintendo, I want to give you money. Just allow me the space to keep the stuff I buy.

NinGurl69 *hugglesJune 27, 2007

GEEZ NINTENDO, WHY MUST YOU SUCK

NWR_pap64Pedro Hernandez, Contributing WriterJune 27, 2007

Quote
Originally posted by: NeoThunder
How are they going to convince people to buy these games that people have never heard of. They are going to need to have some demo method or game video preview to sell it.

Probably the same way they promote their VC titles; They make a press release announcing the highlights of the month, stating why the games are special and worth trying out.

As for the six month delay, everyone is bitching about it but few realize thbat this might be a good thing for indie developers. That way they will have more than enough time to finish a game and have it ready just in time for the channel's launch. I think Nintendo might be thinking about the developers first and the players second.

I am a tad worried about the pricing, though. I mean, considering how overpriced the VC games are right now I fear that they might want to charge 20 bucks on an indie game when probably the game is not worth that much. On the other, the developers would get some money game. Believe it or not, it takes a lot of money just to get one small game running so it would be nice if they got something out of it.

TJ SpykeJune 27, 2007

They first announced this before launch, why won't the games be ready until 2008?

KaironCarmine Red, Associate EditorJune 27, 2007

They didn't have dev kits to give to indies.

Remember how a while back we heard that they had to postpone the "indie" program because of lack of dev kits, since all the big publishers were gobbling them up at that time?

GalfordJune 27, 2007

I'm really curious to see how this is going to play out.
Both Sony and MS have programs for this in place I wonder what Nintendo is going to do.

KaironCarmine Red, Associate EditorJune 27, 2007

What sets this apart is that Nintendo is really hands-off. They'll bug test it, and make sure it has an ESRB rating, then discuss final pricing and host it, acting as the retailer.

They won't screen content, they won't require HD graphics, they won't force motion control (GC controller, classic, all are supported!).

They assume you'll have a publisher, but with startup costs so low we could see a lot of "self-published" games. Not having to deal with a publisher-type entity in between you and the retailer could be very appealing.

BlkPaladinJune 27, 2007

I'm thinking it may be a little more hands off then that. There were three major reasons given to me when I talked to Nintendo about this last year.
1) Development Kits were not in big supply.
2) The internal frame work wasn't done.
3) They wanted a viable plan to make money.

As for promotion of the service. I doubt they will do anything much more than say it out and maybe give some of the better highlights everymonth. The developers who are submitting games have to do the foot work. Plus I'm guessing but when you are looking at the the game there will be more details button and I think I remember seeing something about game videoes being added. Then the developers can try to get some media outlet to look at them and recommend them... Sounds like a fun project.

MaryJaneJune 27, 2007

Don't forget publications and websites like NWR, IGN, and Nintendo Power to give shout outs to good games. Also word of mouth will be a big help to these games not to mention a hopefully more robust Wii Message board system to help spread the word

WuTangTurtleJune 27, 2007

im sure the indie dev's could host their own sites with video and images to show off their games. plus every game magazine and website typically review these type of games already on other systems.

TrueNerdJune 27, 2007

Pricing? Storage? I'm just hopeful we'll see good games. Everything else will work itself out as long as the games rock my face off.

theratJune 28, 2007

how much for a dev kit? they should release the SDK on the interwebs for free. that would be revolutionary.

KDR_11kJune 28, 2007

Quote
Originally posted by: NeoThunder
How are they going to convince people to buy these games that people have never heard of. They are going to need to have some demo method or game video preview to sell it.

Believe it or not but an experiment suggested that indie games sell better when there are no demos available.

TheBlackCatJune 28, 2007

I hope they have a similar framework for applications. The Wii is obviously a gaming system first, but supporting third-party channels and other add-ons would be great.

ThePermJune 28, 2007

I want to make a pokemon clone...better than pokemon!

NephilimJune 28, 2007

So I can make xbox live arcade games for free, using the .net application, but have to pay 2,000US for a wii dev kit?

KaironCarmine Red, Associate EditorJune 28, 2007

Well, technically you can use XNA to make PC games for free. To port that PC code to the X360, you need to pay an annual $99. Then only other people paying the same $99 can download and play your game. To get to XBLA, you have to be something that MS takes an interest in, otherwise, good luck.

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