Nintendo Encourages Indie Development for Wii U

roseofbattle

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Apr 18, 2011
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Nintendo Encourages Indie Development for Wii U


Following gestures by Sony and Microsoft to include independent developers, Nintendo spends more time on its "independent-friendly" infrastructure.

Nintendo is reminding people that it is now on the side of independent game developers instead of throwing more hurdles their way. Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime said Nintendo's systems had not been straightforward for new developers, limiting the games made for Nintendo systems and what developers can do. Fils-Aime wants to provide more resources to independent developers to help them publish their content. Nintendo began by bringing the Unity Engine to the Wii U last year [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/119691-Nintendo-Brings-Unity-Engine-to-Wii-U ], a popular game engine recognized by the indie gaming community. Fils-Aime also pointed to the Nintendo Web Framework, a development environment for developing Wii U games in various languages, as an example of how Nintendo has shown themselves more open to independent games.

Making games independently isn't a glamorous job, and it comes with both perks and downfalls when compared to big-name game companies. With a price cut for the Wii U, discussions of the console's success, and now comments from Fils-Aime about making independent development a big priority, Nintendo is doing its best to market their console as desirable to both consumers and developers.

"Again, we've taken steps on the development side to make our system independent-friendly," Fils-Aime said. "Second thing we've done is we've created the merchandising capabilities, right? [On the eShop] you'll see that we're merchandising indies' content right alongside our content."

Sony and Microsoft have both made steps to promote indie development for their systems. Earlier this week, the Xbox One will include self-publishing [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/127181-Sony-Slashing-Indie-Game-Prices-for-PAX-Prime ], and at Gamescom the company announced The Independent Developers @ Xbox Initiative. With all three companies marketing themselves to independent developers, just think of all the new and different games in store for us.

Source: IGN [http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/08/29/nintendo-we-love-independent-developers?utm_campaign=ign+main+twitter&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social]

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Glaice

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Mar 18, 2013
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Didn't Nintendo exclude Japanese indie developers some time ago or something?
 

Roxas1359

Burn, Burn it All!
Aug 8, 2009
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j-e-f-f-e-r-s said:
As someone else said in the thread I believe this means Nintendo is allowing Japanese Indies as well because before they would block them, which kinda is stupid if you ask me.
 

Roxas1359

Burn, Burn it All!
Aug 8, 2009
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j-e-f-f-e-r-s said:
Neronium said:
j-e-f-f-e-r-s said:
As someone else said in the thread I believe this means Nintendo is allowing Japanese Indies as well because before they would block them, which kinda is stupid if you ask me.
Yeah, but Reggie's NoA, so he has nothing to do with that decision anyway. And this article doesn't really mention Japanese developers, just Reggie re-iterating stuff Nintendo have already been doing.


Ah well, it gets the message out that Nintendo are indie friendly now, so mustn't grumble.
While yes it's generated for America, I would hope that Nintendo is now allowing for Japanese indies because not accepting applications from an entire country, especially their home country, just seems really backwards. Yes there will be people who wanna make the "hentai" games, but in all honesty that's not the only thing that can be made. >.>
 

subtlefuge

Lord Cromulent
May 21, 2010
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KingH3nrry said:
Glaice said:
Didn't Nintendo exclude Japanese indie developers some time ago or something?
Yeah, but they're accepting Japanese applications now.
Presumably that had something to do with the political/legal climate or some sort of issue with Nintendo's contracts.

Sometimes you have to shut things down for a couple weeks if something is wrong and you want to fix it.