Nintendo takes wraps off of WiiWare

28 Comments by Justin McElroy Jun 27th 2007 8:35AM
Filed under: Nintendo Wii, Business, Casual

Nintendo is the latest on the indie console-development bandwagon with WiiWare, a "game-creation service that will allow developers large and small to create new downloadable video game content" that the company announced this morning.

The company is making it clear that they're looking for little guys to make games for the console, though it's currently unclear exactly how that will be done. Interestingly, Reggie Fils-Amie told N'Gai Croal of Newsweek that the games would be checked for bugs but not vetted by Nintendo. Developers would be responsible for securing an ESRB rating (AO titles won't be welcome, sorry Manhunt 2.) Look for the first WiiWare to start appearing in early 2008.

Nintendo will also be deciding how many points the games will be sold for when they're put on the Wii Shop channel. With this brave new world of indie development, who knows where the next big Wii game will come from now? Well, we do, it will come from Nintendo. But thanks to WiiWare, the search for the next big way to wait for the next big Nintendo game just got a lot more interesting.

Read -- Nintendo's WiiWare Paves The Way ...
Read -- What is WiiWare? Level Up Gets the Scoop ...

Tags: esrb, manhunt2, newsweek, ngai, nintendo, reggie, ugc, wii, wiiware, XNA

(Page 1) Reader Comments

zwarrior: Jun 27th 2007; 8:44AM

"Well, we do, it will come from Nintendo" lol funny cause its true. Great writing!

Ben: Jun 27th 2007; 8:45AM

I'm not quite sure how you can call this jumping on the User Generated Content bandwagon. There's no mention of hobbyists or home development, or anything akin to XNA (which many would argue isn't a pure example of UGC either). They may be courting the casual games market or encouraging development from small indie developers, but this is still very much focussed on professional development not end-users from my reading.

afrokid53: Jun 27th 2007; 8:48AM

ooooooooo i wonder wt engines it'll accept i mean it'll be lush if it accepted rpgmaker games or game maker or summin it would be an amazing past time :P

flameofdoom666: Jun 27th 2007; 8:52AM

This can be very promising. Hopefully at E3 we will get more details.

X_Arre: Jun 27th 2007; 8:54AM

I think I speak for a lot of people when I say...

FINALLY!

Justin McElroy: Jun 27th 2007; 8:55AM

A good point Ben. I've altered the post. See, one man can make a difference!

Konny: Jun 27th 2007; 9:07AM

512mb of internal memory ftl.. (since you cant play games off SD)

And, since they are already selling minigame collections at full price, and VC games at $12.. im guessing these games will come in around $30-40.

vidGuy: Jun 27th 2007; 9:09AM

I'm looking forward to some original content - I'm hoping for some enterprising young developers' version of an SNES RPG.

And while we all know Nintendo's 1st party games are the biggest sellers on their consoles, it doesn't always mean they are the best. Right now, the game with the best control is by a 3rd party (RE:4 by Capcom). Arguably, they had more time to perfect the control, but still... I wasn't going to buy this port since I've played the original but the controls convinced me.

vidGuy: Jun 27th 2007; 9:12AM

Konny, no VC game is over $10, and those are full blown N64 games. I imagine most original content will be at the SNES, Genesis level and will come in under $10... Nintendo originally said (before the console was released) that NO download would be more than $10.

Also, the rumors are that Nintendo is going to open up the USB to all external harddrives via an update in the fall. Say hello to 500GB of storage for $100.

Even if there's no HDD support, I bet they could update to get the games to run off SD - they'd just have to be loaded into ram, and very few (if any) games wouldn't fit into the Wiis ram.

JodyAnthony: Jun 27th 2007; 9:28AM

dont bother vidguy, konny is in his own world

Ben: Jun 27th 2007; 9:40AM

Thanks Justin :)

There's just been an equivalent announcement for the service on this side of teh pond (Europe). It seems the service will be known as WiiWare in the US and Wii Software in Europe. No word on nomenclature for Japan as of yet.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=26163

It certainly will be interesting to see how this new strategy pans out and how they will interact with with developers and consumers alike.

Erwos: Jun 27th 2007; 9:48AM

"very few (if any) games wouldn't fit into the Wiis ram."

Yeah, except then you've lost RAM to actually execute the game with. 96mb of RAM doesn't go that far.

Bender: Jun 27th 2007; 9:49AM

vidGuy: I don't want to speak to Konny or anyone else, but i must remind you that not everyone on Joystiq resides in the USA.

I'm an Australian living in Japan, so that $10 price is not applicable to me.

It's just a little thing, but i've seen people on Joystiq have senseless arguments over such tiny details before.

US$10 would clarify... or AU$10.

vidGuy: Jun 27th 2007; 9:54AM

That's true Erwos, but it's really not a problem if the game weighs in at 16MBs or even 64MB. I'm looking forward to a solution, though, because I'm quickly running out of internal storage with all my VC downloads.

Sorry about that, Bender. Here's an international pricing list if anyone is interested; they're pricy but not too ridiculous for the right games, IMO.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Console

samfish: Jun 27th 2007; 10:01AM

Bring on the shoot 'em ups, beat 'em ups and platformers, I say!
I have high hopes for this. I just hope I'm not let down...

Also, Nintendo needs to bring Mission In Snowdrift Land to this thing. Awesome game, but it sucked on the keyboard. It would have been great to play on the Classic Controller...with it's over-sized D-pad.

Quakeulf: Jun 27th 2007; 10:15AM

KKRIEGER GUISE! Remember that game?

Jonathan Tran: Jun 27th 2007; 10:17AM

Let's see:

N+
Super Columbine (j/k)
A million versions of Bejeweled
a lot of Dreamcast style shooters
hopefully SOMETHING with waggle

thispaceforsale: Jun 27th 2007; 10:19AM

Excellent, perhaps this will also serve as a portal for translated games
Der Langrisser
Star Ocean
Live a Live
Alcahest
Ys iv
Bahamut Lagoon
Rendering Ranger R2
to name just a few

Rob Accomando: Jun 27th 2007; 10:24AM

They better have some demo or user review system. I'm not about to blindly drop Wii points on a game that's crap. Which means HDD support.

Matt: Jun 27th 2007; 10:30AM

Let's get some Castle Crashers up in this bish (or at least something like it)! All hail the rebirth of 4-player arcade beatemup's!

Matt: Jun 27th 2007; 10:38AM

Oh yeah, and amen to what Rob said.

Jonathan Tran: Jun 27th 2007; 11:17AM

we need something at least as good as geometry wars, like calculus wars

danjo1: Jun 27th 2007; 11:19AM

here's what I'm thinking:

- a full featured media player (mp3, mpeg4, divx, xvid), maybe VLC Player
- Firefox
- emulators: rather than distributing through Nintendo (which they would not like), the programmer can distribute the source code

KirbyMeister: Jun 27th 2007; 12:07PM

You do realize that Wii Ware has already been up on the Shop Channel for a while. It's where the Internet Channel is found...

What? Did you think that they were going to dump them on the VC?

Kylearan: Jun 27th 2007; 1:27PM

Hmm. Seems like a nice idea.

Can't help but think it'll put an even further dent into 3rd party support, though -- their implementation of the Wii-mote and Nunchuck have been less than stellar so far.

So ... I guess it's good that they're opening the box. But I'm leery of the long-term consequence.

Martin: Jun 27th 2007; 4:09PM

Third parties do what they want with the Wiimote. Some suck, and some don't (Capcom with RE4, for instance).

I'm looking forward to seeing what they have to offer on Wii Ware, though I do agree that they need to have downloadable demos (this applies also to VC games).

Mr Khan: Jun 27th 2007; 4:35PM

Oh this is excellent, though

Think about all the GlovePIE goodness flowing around the interwebs, this would allow for Indie studios to implement a lot of those ingenious concepts

(Read Revolutionary on WiiFanboy, and the potential goodness will be revealed)

Sean: Jul 9th 2007; 2:14PM

Yay, Nintendo is deciding to license games the way I like, I am now officially considering to consider getting a Wii.

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