Gaming WiiWare

[Railgun]

It's finally happening. The original Mario and Zelda games are great, but gamers want original downloadable games too. Nintendo will soon be joining the likes of Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network with a new online offering called WiiWare.

As was originally hinted at by System 3 CEO Mark Cale, Nintendo is indeed launching a complement to its Virtual Console – a service that will allow gamers to download original games designed for Wii, not just classics like those found on Virtual Console.

According to N'Gai Croal of Newsweek who broke the news late on Tuesday, Nintendo has decided to call this new offering WiiWare. Much like Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade or Sony's PlayStation Network, WiiWare should allow independent development and original ideas to flourish.

Moreover, it would appear that Nintendo is truly reaching out to the little guys as well. "What's more interesting is that Nintendo isn't only seeking WiiWare from established publishers and developers like Ubisoft and Sega. At a Nintendo developer's conference earlier this week, the company informed attendees that it was seeking from indie developers as well," said Croal. "Shorter, original, more creative games from small teams with big ideas; these are the buzzwords that you'll be hearing from Nintendo..."

Although Nintendo controls the platform and therefore will determine pricing for each game (in Wii Points, just like on Virtual Console), the titles will not actually be vetted by Nintendo. Nintendo will, however, check games for bugs and compatibility, and with developers and publishers to make sure their games have secured ratings with the ESRB.

The first batch of WiiWare titles aren't expected to launch until next year.

Source

 

[legendofphil]

You knew it was coming, but it sounds like the dev kits are finally in the hands of indie developers.
I expect the first set of games will be revealed at e3.

 

[chadders]

going off this guys its later today!!!!

http://www.t3.co.uk/news/247/games/gamecub...ware_good_to_go

 

[legendofphil]

I hope they make changes to the channel system soon, with this being launched it could get filled soon, along with the internal memory.

 

[chadders]

i wonder if they'll let you transfer em to your SD card like your VC games??

 

[shaunj66]

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.

The worldwide innovator in the creation of interactive entertainment, Nintendo Co., Ltd., of Kyoto, Japan, manufactures and markets hardware and software for its Wii™, Nintendo DS™, Game Boy® Advance and Nintendo GameCube™ systems. Since 1983, Nintendo has sold nearly 2.4 billion video games and more than 409 million hardware units globally, and has created industry icons like Mario™, Donkey Kong®, Metroid®, Zelda™ and Pokémon®. A wholly owned subsidiary, Nintendo of America Inc., based in Redmond, Wash., serves as headquarters for Nintendo's operations in the Western Hemisphere. For more information about Nintendo, visit the company's Web site at www.Nintendo.com.

 

[SlyGuy]

*crosses fingers for Catan*

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/c/catanxbo...ade/default.htm

 

[Hadrian]

Hopefully they'll have something on show for this at E3. Also hope that Reggie is there talking it up and says "And where will you put all of these games? Wii HARDRIVE!!"

Crowd goes wild, lots of applause until we find out thats its only a 4gb hardrive.

Anyway, can't wait for this I hope the games are at least the same quality as the great stuff on Live.

@GamerGuyDude:
I enjoyed Capcoms version of Catan on the N-Gage, so that would be a decent addition on WiiWare.

I'm also hoping this will let Nintendo make smaller games as well that will become bigger games or perhaps revisit stuff like Kid Icarus.

 

[AshuraZro]

Hopefully they'll have something on show for this at E3. Also hope that Reggie is there talking it up and says "And where will you put all of these games? Wii HARDRIVE!!"

Personally, I'd prefer support for most usb storage devices. But I guess that'd be just a pipe dream.

 

[Akoji]

Im quite happy to read what i just saw =) I was waiting that for a long time lol.

And yeah it would be fun to be able to use USB storage solutions

 

[KINGOFNOOBS]

I hope they let you use USB hard drives and/or release a offical one for the casuals, and/or let you read/write DIRECTLY from the SD card.

 

[zabique]

UNFORTUNATELY

((

http://www.maxconsole.net/?mode=news&newsid=18435

 

[Wanque]

Who are they releasing these supposed dev tools to?

How do you define an 'indie developer'?

If Nintendo were really trying to find new, original game ideas, they need to release the tools to everyone - not just supposed 'indie developers', as defined by Nintendo themselves.

 

[Vater Unser]

Crowd goes wild, lots of applause until we find out thats its only a 4gb hardrive.

I'd prefer a 4GB harddrive for ~40 bucks over a 20GB harddrive for $100...

 

[iTech]

Who are they releasing these supposed dev tools to?

How do you define an 'indie developer'?

If Nintendo were really trying to find new, original game ideas, they need to release the tools to everyone - not just supposed 'indie developers', as defined by Nintendo themselves.

Exactly. Knowing nintendo, "Indie" probably means something like "illiterate underpaid software developers from India" or some shit like that. You'll have to license as an "indie" developer with Nintendo before they give you the SDK, which costs 1000 dollars and consists of a Nintendo 64 MIPSR4000 compiler.

And wtf - 2008? It's asif they allready know that by then, the hardware will be so increadibly outdated no self-respected third-party developer is going to write shit for it anymore. They need "indie" to somehow fix it all, releasing crappy shit no one is gonna be playing because they will be too busy with their much cooler Wii homebrew. By 2009, I predict all Wii games will be straight ports from the NintendoDS. And by 2010, Nintendo announces the "Nintendo Mii", a Nintendo DS sequel with a camera slapped on it and a processor which is just a bit faster to allow for the complex gesture/image-recognition software to work, ultimately making it a Nintendo DS with a camera.

 

[shaunj66]

This is all very well, but why the long wait? Why must we wait until NEXT YEAR which is like 6 months away (even though; knowing Nintendo it will be some time in the middle of next year and probably even later for Europe).

Nintendo really need to speed things up.

 

[bobrules]

opportunities for soft mod?

 

[SlyGuy]

Does the Wii support SDHC? If so you can buy a nice SDHC card that holds 8gb. Plenty space.

 

[Mangofett]

Ahh, I think with this trend of "gaming for everyone" they might allow people to use USB drives and things...

 

[Hellfenix]

Seriously though, Nintendo is moving slow because it's market still hasn't reached a stable situation, it's still growing way too fast to be profitable to let anything out. This is also why they are postponing games, they are letting everyone on the planet have their own Wii so they can make more sales with the games / wares