Indie Games coming to Wii... next year...

[ban25]

Between the QC and the ESRB rating, this pretty much rules out garage outfits, although it could work quite well for small teams.

 

[StefanS]

Between the QC and the ESRB rating, this pretty much rules out garage outfits, although it could work quite well for small teams.

Well, for starters they would have to shell out for a Wii DevKit anyways, so it's not like anyone can start dev'ing for Wii. As for QC Fils-Aime told LevelUp that they'd wouldn't restrict any ideas other than no AO ratings.

 

[ban25]

Well, for starters they would have to shell out for a Wii DevKit anyways, so it's not like anyone can start dev'ing for Wii. As for QC Fils-Aime told LevelUp that they'd wouldn't restrict any ideas other than no AO ratings.

Sure, but my point is that the QA testing and ESRB rating processes are not cheap. This will likely deter some indie developers, but it should also help to produce higher quality games in the end.

 

[ERP]

Between the QC and the ESRB rating, this pretty much rules out garage outfits, although it could work quite well for small teams.

ESRB isn't that expensive, as an aside I think they just introduced special pricing for low budget titles, the devkits will be your primary cost and the Wii one is very cheap (relatively speaking), so I don't see a problem for Garage based outfits.

 

[DeanoC]

Indeed I'm not sure its public knowledge about the cost of Wii dev kits but I expect lots of people here have spend more on a laptop at one time or another. Its in that kind of range...

So if you think about it, thats a fairly reasonable business cost. All games development has costs, if you making indie pc games, you have to budget for a different graphics cards and the like else it simply won't work on some machines. I expect (tho haven't done the actual figures yet) that operating costs of a small PC garage team and a Wii version are very similar.

A small team can easily work with 1 or 2 kits (The first PS1 titles I worked on, were made with 3 kits between 20 people). And I expect making a PC version might not be too hard (the controller is the main issue of course but PC have mouse...) and that gives you an additional revenue stream.

It may even explain why the Wii controller is unprotected. You can make the game on a PC and then port to Wii when your finished...

 

[StefanS]

Indeed I'm not sure its public knowledge about the cost of Wii dev kits but I expect lots of people here have spend more on a laptop at one time or another. Its in that kind of range...

IIRC, the number floating around was about 3500 USD.

 

[rekator]

It's seem that support for Wii arrive in Unity game developpement tool

Unity To Enable Nintendo Wii Games
San Francisco – March 13, 2007 – We're extremely proud to announce that later this year, Unity will support creating games for the amazing Nintendo Wii game console.

By marrying a flexible game creation tool with a console that opens up many new modes of gaming, this will empower game developers like never before. Unity invites experimentation and playful game construction and allows you to create functioning game prototypes in mere hours. From there on it provides solid tools for a team to scale up the production until the gold master.

"This is the product combo of our dreams," says CEO David Helgason. "Ever since it was announced we've longed to give game developers access to the sheer creative fun of the Nintendo Wii."

We'll be making more announcements shortly about the business and technical details of the Nintendo Wii license. Get in touch with sales@otee.dk for more information on entering the early adopter program.

From http://unity3d.com/company/news.html

 

[ninzel]

FWIW I think this is a really interesting announcement. Unlike live and the PS3 network, I think Nintendos setup really does open up possibilities for new business models.

It's practical for a small shop to build live or PS3 online games, but they are still a considerable investment and require a publisher to get your product out the door. If what I'm hearing about the Nintendo setup is accurate then it would be a much smaller investment and no publisher required. It looks like Nintendo has some rules in place that should stop the big boys saturating the market overnight, and at least allow the small guys to have a shot.

The big question for me is with no QC at the Nintendo end will the dross drown out the stuff that's worth playing and make it difficult to find the worthwhile titles. Effectively making the service worthless. I'd heard that part of the reason that MS started requiring a publisher for live games was as a first level filter to reduce the number of crap concept submissions they were seeing.

I imagine the free market system will take care of that just as it does in other industries.
The better games through various ways whether it will be word of mouth or review scores, will get purchased more. The ones that get purchased more will in turn get the most advertising or spotlights from Nintendo since the higher selling games make them more money. And so and so on.
it's not a perfect system,but the free market system generally does best.

 

[ERP]

IIRC, the number floating around was about 3500 USD.

It's less than that.

 

[ninzel]

I heard around $2000-2500 or a Wii dev kit.