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Nintendo Wii Homebrew Contest 2007
Croakyvoice writes "DCEmu is hosting the worlds first Nintendo
Wii and Nintendo Gamecube Homebrew Coding Contest with prizes of $500 on offer
for Homebrew and Emulators for the Wii and Gamecube, The hope is that through
this contest an exploit will be released that will allow full homebrew on the
Nintendo Wii without a Modchip. Gamecube
Homebrew is already on the Wii with a host of systems emulated such as Snes,
Genesis, Gameboy and Neogeo."
How long did you have to wait for the wii to come out?
Until you get lucky ;) Seriously, I have been going to various stores, every once in a while, asking them when their next batch is due.
If you are in the UK, then GAME make you do this. Those of us who have better things to do than hang around video game stores would be well-advised to try GameStation, who will take a deposit and phone you up when your name reaches the top of the list.
The Wii is a thoroughly well-designed and enjoyable toy. I'd certanly like to see it opened up a bit. How else will we get Wii change-ringing?
It's not even for real money. It's $300 store credit to some junk store that sells crappy handheld knock offs.
As well as Flash, you can do HTML and JavaScript and graphics in <canvas> – I experimented with an FPS engine a while ago, and developed it just with desktop versions of Opera and Firefox, and reportedly it actually works on the Wii too. (Recent nightly builds of Safari also support it – it's nice when browser interoperability works.)
It's quite horrifically inefficient doing all this in a web browser rather than C++, but there's still a lot you can manage that's within the bounds of feasibility, if you use some imagination to simplify what you need the technology to do for you.
Incidentally, I like the idea of supporting open standards like <canvas> and <video> rather than proprietary platforms like Flash, particularly given that everyone using the Wii browser has to (indirectly) pay for licensing the Flash player from Adobe.
Yup. It's something I've looked into myself. The $2k isn't a big deal but as an indy mobile game developer who just works out of a home office, it's kind of a no-go. The Wii shop channel would be an awesome platform for independant/small game devs to try their hand at a few small, $5 Wii games, nevermind the potential from purely hobbyist homebrew devs. Sure, there probably wouldn't be heaps of great new awesome content but a few gems are bound to turn up and many more "fun time wasters" or even the odd program that might inspire one of the larger established dev companies. It'd be a win-win-win all around.
Part of the whole homebrewing philosophy stems from the high cost of development of some of these systems (case in point PS3 dev box is 10,000 dollars)
But if you REALLY want to create some good games for the Wii, and maybe even sell them via the Virtual Console for 5-10 bucks, then 2k for a developer kit aint that bad at all.
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So what. If Nintendo made similar tools available, you'd be vendor locked to them. Supporting homebrew for your products is far from equivalent to the MS mantra 'Embrace, Extend, Extinguish'. XNA is a step in the right direction, but $99USD yearly fees destroy its homebrew credibility. Still, it's already far more fully featured for making a game than what Sony or Nintendo have to offer. When XNA drops its fees, Sony opens up the architecture and Nintendo chime in then we will see a truly powerful amateur market emerge. Until then, it will remain at a fraction of its potential.
Forming an LLC costs a couple hundred dollars if you have a lawyer do it for you. Less if you do it yourself.
Also, you don't have to get your dev kit directly from Nintendo. You can get one from a licensed publisher, who generally won't be as strict as Nintendo. Especially if you talk to an indie friendly publisher.