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That's where things like PSN, XBL, XNA, wiiware, etc come into play. Smaller, cheeper games, with smaller, cheeper budgets.

But these environments still need an office for the developer to even be considered. Take Nintendo's requirements for example: "We require that companies are working from secure business offices. Home offices are not considered secure locations." That excludes a lot of indie developers working on their first title so that they can even afford an office.

you save all you possibly can for a few years until you have six figures worth of capital you can use to bootstrap your business with.

I end up with $5,000 per year after I've taken care of rent, food, utilities, and keeping my skills current. To get to six figures would require saving for 20 years. Or am I missing some obvious shortcut?

Office space, are you kidding? You're working from home buddy!

That's not good enough. Nintendo wrote in Become an Authorized Developer:

We require that companies are working from secure business offices. Home offices are not considered secure locations.

Where do you suggest I turn next?

http://www.warioworld.com/

Click on developer applications.

But seriously, you aren't going to qualify yet, they simply won't currently authorize an individual working from home.* You really need to be an 'established business'. I would suggest doing the game for the PC first, or Xbox XNA getting some work behind you, and establishing the business, before approaching Nintendo, if that's really what you want.

I presume this is primarily a filter to keep the kids and hackers out. After all 2k-3k isn't that hard to come up with.

I'm actually in your position. The standard practice for obtaining a WiiWare license appears to be:

1. Create a title that runs on the computer. Even if it's just a demo, it should convince Nintendo that you can create games for their system.

2. OBTAIN COMMERCIAL OFFICE SPACE! I can't stress this one enough. Even if you get 200 square feet of office space that costs $200/mo., this step is critical to getting Nintendo to trust you. (Nintendo is concerned about secure access to the development kit.)

3. Apply for a WiiWare license. 2D games don't matter. DYC, World of Goo, Mega Man 9, Gradius Rebirth, Cave Story, and many other games have already paved that road for you.

At least, that's the strategy my little cadre expects to pursue. If we can ever finish pulling a team together, that is. Having a part time game designer and part time programmer does us no good if we can't get one of our artist friends to sign up. At least we have some seriously recognized brands lined up.

Anyway, feel free to email me if you need any more info. I'm far from a fountain of information on the process, but I may be able to point you in the right direction.

Unfortunately, common sense is not a job requirement for running a large company. I just wish they would let me buy a dev kit if I wanted one :(.

Here's the application to become a Nintendo dev. Get accepted and you can buy your kit.

Honestly, from what I've seen, the problem is on the other end. There's no problem becoming a developer, the trick is getting them to approve titles for release on the platform, but that really isn't that unique.

Yes, i imagine they do favor some developers over others, but that's the nature of the game. Of course they're going to think more of you if you have a proven track record.

I suggest looking here to get started though.

Yes, you will have to contact them in order to get any real information, but i was surprised at exactly how cheap their development hardware is compared to their competitors.

Disclaimer: I only moonlight as a games developer, it's not my occupation.

Google it my friend, It's not hard. Here's a quick search. Would you care to back up why being lazy is acceptable... ;) http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Wii+%2B+development+cost&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Read this article about how the Wii costs about half the price of the other toys to develop for, it's fun:
http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/features/cost-of-development-greatly-favors-wii-say-publishers/69714/

There's nothing marginal about 50%+ less for Wii dev cost.

And $2000 for a SDK is not an arm an a leg. Here's another link to save you the aggravation of searching:
http://www.warioworld.com/apply/wii.html

As noted by the other response to your post, the Wii shares many similarities to its predecessor, which make it easier and cheaper to develop for, especially for the studios that put their time in on the Cube. And just to clear something up, there's nothing last-gen about a Wii's performance or the tech it uses, which is 6 years more advanced.

A publisher doesn't need to sell nearly as many units on a Wii as it does on the PS3 or 360 in order to see a return on their investment. This this is do to the lower development cost and simpler hardware configuration. **Namco stated that it needs to sell 500,000 PS3 games to make a profit as an example. Compare this to 165,000, which is what I've read is needed for the Wii.
** http://www.gamespot.com/news/6162509.html

So just because a game sells more units on a 360 as an example, that doesn't mean it has made a profit for its publisher/developer. With the Wii's HUGE user base for its relatively short life on the market along with its "significantly" lower development cost, publishers/developers have a better chance of seeing a profit on a Wii game than the PS3 or 360.

OMG!! I'm using this 12 year old kid term, because you used HARDCORN -- now I must rant. First off, let me present you with a link that disproves your myth that kids that like to aim with their thumb and deem blood as mature, buy more games. The supposed hardcore gamer is a joke. I've been gaming since the age of pong. There's nothing hardcore about most console gamers, since they're used to games that have generally been dumbed down do to the limiting nature of a gamepad. Compared to the games I played in the eighties and ninteies, games now days are a walk in the park. Sure, they look way better, but they're way less sophisticated... I loved the complexity that is SYSTEM SHOCK, I hated the simpleton that is BioShock.

Anway, here's the link, read fact number "4."
http://www.theesa.com/facts/top_10_facts.php
The average age of the most frequent game buyer is 38 years old. In 2007, 92 percent of computer game buyers and 80 percent of console game buyers were over the age of 18.

Also notice that the average gamer is age 33, not the teenage kid publishers have been marketing to for the past 8 years, so guys hat are in their twenties now. ;) :p

Kids won't have access to a flash cart -- unless they have parents like my friends. Guys my age buy our games and on that note, buy your DS games you pirate! :p

<]=)

I think there are some misunderstandings about what it takes for you to be accepted into Nintendo's development program. Earlier, Nintendo was pretty strict and only accepted established developers. That has changed somewhat. You can find the details at http://warioworld.com/, Nintendo's dev site, but here are the important points for pepole who aren't currently game developers:

As of April 2, we have two categories for Wii developer status, Tier 1 and Tier 2. Tier 1 is focused on existing developers who have shipped games in the console/handheld space. Tier 2 is for startups, and other experienced software companies who have not yet shipped games. The designation of Tier 1 or Tier 2 for your company will be at Nintendo's discretion.

More on this page.

I think there are some misunderstandings about what it takes for you to be accepted into Nintendo's development program. Earlier, Nintendo was pretty strict and only accepted established developers. That has changed somewhat. You can find the details at http://warioworld.com/, Nintendo's dev site, but here are the important points for pepole who aren't currently game developers:

As of April 2, we have two categories for Wii developer status, Tier 1 and Tier 2. Tier 1 is focused on existing developers who have shipped games in the console/handheld space. Tier 2 is for startups, and other experienced software companies who have not yet shipped games. The designation of Tier 1 or Tier 2 for your company will be at Nintendo's discretion.

More on this page.

The Wii SDK's price is not disclosed to the public, and is likely covered by NDA. At one time it was reported to be about $2000, but that could be an early version, a specific contract price with a single developer, or even just plain incorrect.

Then there's the unfortunately reality that it will cost you not only money, but also your soul. If you're not convinced of this, go read their criteria for becoming a Wii developer at their WarioWorld site.

If you read that page carefully, you'll note that even if you can pay for the dev kit, you have to be "accepted" as a licensed Nintendo developer first. During this acceptance process, they don't give a crap whether you can pay for the dev kit or not. You can't order one until you're accepted. But to be accepted, you have to be an established developer with an existing game portfolio, and the games can't suck. You also have to have an office. So no working from home. (This is supposedly to keep Nintendo's proprietary stuff "secure". As if an office can't be robbed.) It also states an approximate price for dev kits: $2500 to $10,000. It also states that they expect "financial stability".

Nintendo is going to make sure you're going to make and finish a game. Not just any game, but a good quality game. You can't just order a dev kit to "play with" or to make "indie" or "hobbyist" games. They want commercial games, and if you can't make one, you can't have a dev kit.

Oh, they are availabe here, and should be under USD 2000 (according to some old gaming articles), but apparently you need solid plan and backing to get them :-(

Oh, they are availabe here, and should be under USD 2000 (according to some old gaming articles), but apparently you need solid plan and backing to get them :-(

An authorized developer must have demonstrated the ability to develop and program excellent software for Nintendo video game systems or for other video game or computer systems. In addition, an authorized developer must have a stable business organization with secure office facilities, equipment, personnel and financial resources in order to insure the security of Nintendo proprietary information and in order to ensure an effective environment for working with Nintendo and/or its licensees. Home offices do not meet this requirement.

You're not searching the right terms. Here is the application website. Note: You will likely be unable to get a dev kit for personal use... You're right in saying they don't really want independent production of games. With the Dev kit it would probably be too easy to figure out how a lot of the internal protection stuff works that they don't want you to know about.

I used Windows as an example of an open platform on which one can demonstrate skills using GCC and a graphics API to develop video games. The others are Mac OS X and Linux, but due to the smaller market share, it is more difficult to recover expenses through donations or registrations if a developer does not port a product to Windows.

What you say contradicts Nintendo's stated policy: "an authorized developer must have a stable business organization with secure office facilities, equipment, personnel and financial resources in order to insure the security of Nintendo proprietary information and in order to ensure an effective environment for working with Nintendo and/or its licensees. Home offices do not meet this requirement" (my emphasis). Are you permitted to disclose details of how you were able to work around this restriction?

Some friends are trying to port Allegro, an amateur gaming library, to DS. I should be helping them as soon as I get the homebrew tools. You can use libnds (see general instructions for installing here). Unfortunately, Nintendo does not sell their SDK to single users, only to companies with a determined profile. You can learn more at Nintendo Software Development Support Group.

Nope. From Wii developer application:

Incidentally, isn't a devkit for Wii $2000?

Plus the cost of incorporation. Plus the cost of hiring somebody to research and write your business plan. Plus the cost of developing and marketing a title for another platform[1] to demonstrate your company's ability to perform. Plus the cost of renting office space, as offices that are attached to a residence are not secure enough for Nintendo.

[1] Nintendo claims that any other platform qualifies, but no major console or handheld platforms are available to startups. The only major open gaming platform is the Microsoft Windows platform, and this platform has not demonstrated a demand for single-head multiplayer games such as Bomberman.

Too late. Nintendo's offering developer kits to the public for a price. This is old news. Sounds pretty accepting of homebrew to me.

The price is $2000 if I remember correctly, cheaper then Sonys official devkit, but still a though price considering that you can get inofficial homebrew and development up and running on Gamecube, NintendoDS and GBA for around $100. Beside, you can't just buy the devkits, you have to be an experienced game developer or have to have a large publisher to back you up to even make it past the entrance door, you can't just go to WarioWorld throw the devkit in your shopping cart and enter a credit card number to get one.

This was obviously a PR thing, anyone with something like $1800 can order a dev kit.

Since when? Last time I tried to click myself Wario World it was impossible to get one unless you already are a large game company.

Not anyone. You have to jump through some hoops before Nintendo accepts your money.
More information can be found at http://warioworld.com/
(no, it's not a gamesite; it's the Nintendo Software Development Support Group Home Page)

A quick copy&paste from their "Become a Licensee" page :
If, after a review of the appropriate summary, you remain interested in becoming a Nintendo licensee, please forward the following non-proprietary information to Nintendo:

1) A detailed description of your company, including a summary of your software development experience, financial resources and stability and your industry leadership. This information should be in the form of a prospectus, business plan or summary statement;

2) A detailed introduction to your key personnel and developers setting forth any technical, managerial or sales experience that may be relevant;

3) A marketing plan for your proposed products, including targeted distribution channels, advertising commitments, consumer service resources, merchandising, etc.;

4) Any market study information on consumer demand for your proposed product which you may be relying on;

5) A written description of your proposed software product;

6) A complete summary and at least three samples of software programs you have previously developed and upon which you rely for establishing your technical know-how.

Nintendo will then undertake to make a determination if your qualifications would support your selection as an authorized licensee. Because Nintendo licensees are provided with highly proprietary information and because our licensees must be able to successfully market and support high quality product to a broad base of Nintendo product users throughout the United States, Canada and South America, Nintendo exercises a high level of care in its appointment of its licensees. If we elect to proceed, we will prepare a formal license agreement which will be forwarded to you for your review. After the mutual execution of an Agreement, Nintendo will provide you with software development specifications, and support.

Not anyone. You have to jump through some hoops before Nintendo accepts your money.
More information can be found at http://warioworld.com/
(no, it's not a gamesite; it's the Nintendo Software Development Support Group Home Page)

A quick copy&paste from their "Become a Licensee" page :
If, after a review of the appropriate summary, you remain interested in becoming a Nintendo licensee, please forward the following non-proprietary information to Nintendo:

1) A detailed description of your company, including a summary of your software development experience, financial resources and stability and your industry leadership. This information should be in the form of a prospectus, business plan or summary statement;

2) A detailed introduction to your key personnel and developers setting forth any technical, managerial or sales experience that may be relevant;

3) A marketing plan for your proposed products, including targeted distribution channels, advertising commitments, consumer service resources, merchandising, etc.;

4) Any market study information on consumer demand for your proposed product which you may be relying on;

5) A written description of your proposed software product;

6) A complete summary and at least three samples of software programs you have previously developed and upon which you rely for establishing your technical know-how.

Nintendo will then undertake to make a determination if your qualifications would support your selection as an authorized licensee. Because Nintendo licensees are provided with highly proprietary information and because our licensees must be able to successfully market and support high quality product to a broad base of Nintendo product users throughout the United States, Canada and South America, Nintendo exercises a high level of care in its appointment of its licensees. If we elect to proceed, we will prepare a formal license agreement which will be forwarded to you for your review. After the mutual execution of an Agreement, Nintendo will provide you with software development specifications, and support.

Erm complete BS.

Yeah, I do this for a living, thanks.

You not only need cart manufacturing, you need a license from Nintendo.

Which they will happily give to anyone who can afford manufacturing. Takes about a week. Ask Sandy Hatcher at NOA for details.

You _need_ a devkit

No, you don't. The devkit is built on CodeWarrior. Nintendo allows GCC and RVCT binaries instead. There is no requirement to use any official tools except when working with the Wifi Connection. Of course, since in context I was talking about an amateur, this doesn't actually matter.

(with compiler/linker and binary signing tools)

Uh, developers don't get signing tools; if they did the signature would long since be leaked. We get DSes that don't make the signature check in the first place, instead.

and you _need_ a marketing/packaging company.

There is no requirement to have a marketing company, whether or not it's good business sense, and Nintendo handles the packaging whether you want them to or not.

Unless you have a million lying around, this is _well_ beyond your average homebrew and indie effort.

Actually, the minimum run of demo carts is currently 1700 units. You can have your game manufactured for roughly the price of a Honda.

In fact, the license from Nintendo is one of the most expensive components

There is no fee for the license at all. It's the SDK which costs money. Warioworld tells you it's $10k, but Nintendo almost always cuts a major break on the price.

and usually why you go through a licensed publisher to get the appropriate licensing

Wrong. It's about the price of manufacturing, like I said.

The marketing and manufacturing of the cart is also higly expensive

Marketing costs on a AAA game are generally in the neighborhood of $300k. Manufacturing is generally closer to $5m. Please stop pretending to know things you don't actually know.

Nintendo and other manufacturers also require a minimum run of 10,000 units.

On the DS it's 1700. On the GameCube it's 450. On the Gameboy Advance it's 500. These numbers are publically available on warioworld.com. On the Playstation 2 it's 2000. On the XBox it's 1500. On the XBox 360 it's 2500. On the PSP it's 3000. Please stop pretending to know things you don't actually know.

To actually do all this from scratch, is pretty rare.

True. So what? We're talking about a few guys making a demo on a machine, not how to publish. Way to get off on a tangent about nothing.

Btw - the NDA for Nintendo doesnt bind you to not giving the price per cart

Yes, it does. I suspect you don't actually have a copy, but in case you do, look at page six line 34. Why would you pretend to know something like this?

last time I checked its not even posted on the devsite (warioworld)

Correct, because it's a protected trade secret, and they give different prices to different developers, which is why the NDA forbids you from discussing it.

Devkits, and components are, not manufacturing carts for sell through.

This is true, but of course, has nothing to do with a few guys making a demo on hardware.

There is no Myth here - access to game development is not easy if you are not well financially backed

No business is easy without money. The game business isn't any different. What you're failing to comprehend is that investment just isn't that hard to come by. I got into the industry on a demo I wrote in three weeks of my spare time, by shopping around for some investor who wanted into the game industry and believed in my product. It took me about a month to find him.

I don't understand why you're trying to tell me about my j

You know, it's not actually that difficult to get into DS game development at all. The only significant hurdle is finding someone to pay to do the actual cart manufacturing. It's not god-awfully expensive, but it's more than I had originally expected; I wish I wasn't NDA bound to not give a number, but you can work out an upper bound with some common sense, and I'll just say "it's near that upper bound." If you can convince the people at Nintendo that you're not just going to turn around and sell the SDK, they'll usually sell you one for much cheaper than the price they quote on http://warioworld.com/. If you'd rather take the simple route and jus get going, the homebrew SDK is free, is GCC, and is quite easy to use.

If you want a conventional Wii development kit go to http://warioworld.com/ and fill out an application to become a Nintendo authorized developer (it's not easy, they have standards); after that it will only cost $2000 per development kit (which is about 1/10 of a PS3 dev kit; many development teams need 5 to 10 of these so it becomes a serious expense). It is possible that Nintendo will release a series of emulators and development environment for free (or a small fee) for those who want to make a virtual console game but there is no information currently.

Being that homebrew Snes games have been made for emulators since about 1996 (and N64 games since about 2000) I suspect the second Nintendo releases any information about the virtual console dev kit they will have dozens of games that are ready to be released.

Don't get your hopes up. Nintendo has to approve you before you get a devkit, which means you have to have the financial ability to make a game, the talent and staff to do it and probably a good idea (unless your a proven developer) If you think that you could make the cut, check out their official site:

http://warioworld.com/
and more specifically http://warioworld.com/apply/wii.html

And this is nothing new by the way, its been the same for all their consoles. However they seem to be more interested in indie companies this generation. I quote, "Keep in mind that we typically look for companies that are established game developers."

Don't get your hopes up. Nintendo has to approve you before you get a devkit, which means you have to have the financial ability to make a game, the talent and staff to do it and probably a good idea (unless your a proven developer) If you think that you could make the cut, check out their official site:

http://warioworld.com/
and more specifically http://warioworld.com/apply/wii.html

And this is nothing new by the way, its been the same for all their consoles. However they seem to be more interested in indie companies this generation. I quote, "Keep in mind that we typically look for companies that are established game developers."

The Wii dev kit may only be a couple thousand US dollars but Nintendo really wants to know who you are and that you are a legitimate corporate developer:

http://www.warioworld.com/apply/wii.html

To even get to the point where they send you an NDA seems pretty tough for the average hobbyist at the moment.

The thing about the Wii and other Nintendo consoles thusfar is that obtaining the devkit requires Nintendo to approve you, and that means you have to have a pretty good company portfolio already. But yeah, the Wii development costs listed there are surprisingly low.

If you're still looking for a place to sign, it should be this page. It doesn't list the Wii yet but should eventually show up here since this is Nintendo's developer website. If the price of admission doesn't scare you off, understand that Nintendo has typically been a pain in the ass to work with. I heard that supposed to be changing with the Wii since they learned the hard way that the GameCube/GBA/DS market share is really dependent on keeping the developers happy. If developers are unhappy, they develop for all the consoles except Nintendo.

You might want to head over to http://www.warioworld.com/ to get an idea for the process you have to go through in order to get your hands on previous dev kits. I believe metrowerks makes tools for game dev http://www.metrowerks.com/.

Now, things may be different for the rev since it looks like they might let indy devs get their hands on these relatively easily, but in the past I think you needed a dev license just to obtain the kits.

I'm in the same boat as you, I'd really like to work on this system as well.

Go to warioworld.com (not wario-world.com which is a different site), scroll down, and click "Become a Licensee". Look for the lines that say "terms and conditions".

Just because you don't know how doesn't mean it can't be done.

I was asking you how to do it.

Are you under the impression that you can't buy the official kit for some reason?

Yes. One has to already have a Nintendo license in order to buy the official kit. This page on a web site maintained by Nintendo about becoming a licensee indicates that one has to already have a business plan, a team of developers who are somehow already experienced, a marketing plan, and other documentation in order to get a Nintendo license. Should one not start working on a garage-type game before having hired someone who speaks businessese to devise a business plan and then waiting for Nintendo to approve one's license?

This just isn't true. If you read the developer site, Nintendo has a series of very clear rules about what they will accept in terms of third party publishing. Nintendo does not accept any second party work. At all. Ever. They never have.

Please do not confuse manufacture for publishing. The role of the publisher is to provide advertising, market research, user testing, software quality assurance, to maintain relationships with retailers, provide a distribution chain, to fund production, frequently to partially or wholly fund development, and generally to get in the way of making a fun game. All Nintendo did was to throttle the game rate from individual publishers so that there was no temptation to flood the market with crap, because at the time they remembered how that killed the 2600 and very nearly killed video gaming as a whole (yeah yeah, it would have been reinvented, but the point is that retailers stopped carrying the things for an entire year; read up on why they invented Robbie the Robot.)

Tengen, by the way, was not Nintendo approved. Nintendo tried many times and eventually succeeded in stopping Tengen from manufactury. Those black carts were eventually ruled by US court as pirate carts. Wisdom Tree, who made the Jesus games in the sky-blue carts, had the same problem, but Tengen fought back for longer because they had all that money from stealing Tetris from Elorg.

Camerica had the gold cartridges with the extra connector on the back of the cart.

Yeah, those were just gold plated EA sports extension carts. Ninny manufactured those.

In any event, If Nintendo chose to do so, they could probably force Squaresoft (now Square-Enix) to allow those games to be sold on a Nintendo-branded service. It's surely a clause in the "Seal of Approval" publishing contract.

Uh. No publisher in their right mind would sign a contract like that. You know, the seal of approval isn't actually a contract at all, let alone a publishing contract. The Seal of Approval is just a marketing mechanism. It carries no weight at all, and a Nintendo-licensed game is not actually required to display said seal.

The contract that Nintendo does require people to sign is publically available on their website, and has been for about ten years. It's generally a good idea to look things up before announcing that they surely contain language which gives one party huge control over another. It's human nature to resist those contracts, and I think you have an inflated view of Nintendo's importance in Square Enix' life. Remember, Square Enix has been away from Nintendo as Square for ten years and as Enix for eight; they've only recently returned, and the profits aren't yet a big deal. Square Enix controls all five of the most popular RPG franchises on Earth, the very category in which Nintendo is hurting the worst on both sides of the ocean.

Do you really honestly believe it's Nintendo bending Square over the barrel, and not the other way around?

This just isn't true. If you read the developer site, Nintendo has a series of very clear rules about what they will accept in terms of third party publishing. Nintendo does not accept any second party work. At all. Ever. They never have.

Please do not confuse manufacture for publishing. The role of the publisher is to provide advertising, market research, user testing, software quality assurance, to maintain relationships with retailers, provide a distribution chain, to fund production, frequently to partially or wholly fund development, and generally to get in the way of making a fun game. All Nintendo did was to throttle the game rate from individual publishers so that there was no temptation to flood the market with crap, because at the time they remembered how that killed the 2600 and very nearly killed video gaming as a whole (yeah yeah, it would have been reinvented, but the point is that retailers stopped carrying the things for an entire year; read up on why they invented Robbie the Robot.)

Tengen, by the way, was not Nintendo approved. Nintendo tried many times and eventually succeeded in stopping Tengen from manufactury. Those black carts were eventually ruled by US court as pirate carts. Wisdom Tree, who made the Jesus games in the sky-blue carts, had the same problem, but Tengen fought back for longer because they had all that money from stealing Tetris from Elorg.

Camerica had the gold cartridges with the extra connector on the back of the cart.

Yeah, those were just gold plated EA sports extension carts. Ninny manufactured those.

In any event, If Nintendo chose to do so, they could probably force Squaresoft (now Square-Enix) to allow those games to be sold on a Nintendo-branded service. It's surely a clause in the "Seal of Approval" publishing contract.

Uh. No publisher in their right mind would sign a contract like that. You know, the seal of approval isn't actually a contract at all, let alone a publishing contract. The Seal of Approval is just a marketing mechanism. It carries no weight at all, and a Nintendo-licensed game is not actually required to display said seal.

The contract that Nintendo does require people to sign is publically available on their website, and has been for about ten years. It's generally a good idea to look things up before announcing that they surely contain language which gives one party huge control over another. It's human nature to resist those contracts, and I think you have an inflated view of Nintendo's importance in Square Enix' life. Remember, Square Enix has been away from Nintendo as Square for ten years and as Enix for eight; they've only recently returned, and the profits aren't yet a big deal. Square Enix controls all five of the most popular RPG franchises on Earth, the very category in which Nintendo is hurting the worst on both sides of the ocean.

Do you really honestly believe it's Nintendo bending Square over the barrel, and not the other way around?

The independent developers thing is the most interesting thing I've heard about any of the consoles in this generation. (I wonder if it weren't a direct response to Greg Costikiyan's comments about Iwata's speech at GDC....)

Shame it'll probably not be homebrew-level development, but more along the lines of the requirements to join the development programs already in place (and viewable at warioworld.com.

"ds language"? I presume you mean ARM assembly language? Do you really think they write these games from the ground up in assembler (as nice as ARM asm is)? Have a look at the MetroWerks site. DS, PSP, PS2, GC and GBA are listed currently. I beleive they also supplied kits for the N64.

http://www.metrowerks.com/MW/Develop/Games/Default .htm
http://www.warioworld.com/

"linux commands"? I don't remember many blockbuster games based on sed or grep.

Why would you want to hijack another DS for anything other than nefarious purposes? If you own another DS (lucky you) then it can be actively shared. No hijack required.

Does it come supplied with Windows? You sound suspiciously like some kid who downloaded a Red Hat ISO once just to join the in-crowd. You couldn't get ALSA working on your laptop so you went back to gaming on XP. If you're going to bash a platform, bash it with authority. Some people know why they prefer one OS over another .

You won't find them on these sites, but BoingBoing had some choice words from Greg Costikiyan (game design pundit and one of the primary guys behind the old Paranoia pen-and-paper RPG) on Iwata's speech. The upshot of his remarks were, basically, sure you're original, but only because the practices of big companies, like Nintendo, made it difficult for other people to take those kinds of risks, by making all their games blockbusters and thus making it difficult for small studios to compete.

At first I thought he had lost it. Thinking about it some more, however, and I can say that actually he's pretty close to the money.

Nintendo has a support website for their developers. While the juicy info is locked off behind site registration (NOT FREE) and such, there is information on what your company can do to gain Nintendo developer status, and what you can do, as an individual developer, to become a licensee. Guess what? They're only looking for established developers.

Let's dissect this for a moment though. In order to program for their system on your own, you must already be an established developer. You can't just tinker, and if you come up with something great, go from there.

I've done some looking into the GBA specs lately, on homebrew sites and such. Here's the secret: the Gameboy Advance is super easy to develop for! You don't even need an official dev kit. Give me a few weeks over the summer and I could easily come up with a working demo of one of my "closet" designs, even though I am not what you would call an "established" developer. (In point of fact, I'm an English grad student.)

But here's my point. It's precisely outsider developers, such as what I'd like to be, who would be most likely to come up with the most inventive and unusual games. And it's established developers who are most likely to give you Guy Game XVIII. Nintendo is not alone in this either -- licensing fees are big bucks, and so are dev kits.

Nintendo is the company, currently existing, that comes up, on the average, with the most innovative games in the industry. I don't think this is arguable. But it all comes from in-house with them. Sony is the only company that has an official path by which a hobbyist can get his own code running on their console -- and it ain't cheap either. Of course Microsoft has tools by which you can develop for Windows, but it's not as easy to pick up on DirectX programming, it seems to me, as it would be to cook something up for the GBA.

Anyway, just a bit of frustrated ranting. You may now resume with your ordinary, everyday existence.

Please cite your sources on GBA being Nitro.

AFAIK, the Nitro name surfaced months after GBA SP and iQue were introduced.

The timeline:

1. GBA
2. Afterburner
3. Nintendo negates Afterburner's reason for existence with GBA SP's switchable frontlight.
4. Nintendo enters China with iQue (handheld _N64_ sans screen)
5. Sony announces PSP with name, proto shots, and hype specs.
6. Nintendo announces Nintendo DS without name or specs, just a description that it will have dual screens.
7. "Nitro" name is seen on wario-world.com (Nintendo's authorized developer relations site), and is removed shortly thereafter.
8. Nintendo DS is announced with super-_N64_ graphics ability, GBA compatibility, and a screenshot that shows it as a hybrid of GBA and GBA SP designs. Price is set for $100-$150 less than PSP's most recent target prices.

...Nintendo, which actually gives away dev kits...

According to Nintendo, a GameCube dev kit costs upwards of $10,000. Not to mention, "Financial stability is expected," which means they don't just loan them out to just-starting developers.

Not that Sony isn't expensive either. And I can't imagine Xbox dev kits being too cheap anymore, either.

While Nintendo currently have the hand-held crown it stopped accepting developers for the GBA a long time ago claiming that 400 was enough. From the handful of decent titles I'd guess it isn't.

Just because you can't sign up for Wario World (Nintendo's official developer support program) doesn't mean you can't develop GBA games and get published with one of the Tier-B publishers. If you want to get into GBA development, get yourself VisualBoyAdvance and GCC targeted for ARM7TDMI and start hacking. Then you can try your games on hardware with an MBV2 cable or Flash Advance Linker from Lik-Sang

Like the GBA it would almost certainly use an ARM chip as that's the only supported processor for Windows 'CE' 2002.

ARM or MIPS or PowerPC or x86 makes little difference compared to the graphics chip. Nintendo's GBA supports up to 128 sprites on top of four layers of scrolling, two layers of scrolling and one layer of rotation, two layers of rotation, or a bitmap. IIRC, Windows CE devices have only a bitmap and no hardware sprites, not even one for a mouse pointer because most of them are pen-based.