Details on Nintendo's Original Downloadable Content

HaymarketRiot writes "N'Gai Croal from Newsweek has given us a broad outline of Nintendo's plans for downloadable original content. To be called 'WiiWare', the company will be selling these all-new games via the Wii's Virtual Store for Wii points. Not only are they looking to big-name developers for these titles, but small garage-style shops as well. 'Shorter, original, more creative games from small teams with big ideas; these are the buzzwords that you'll be hearing from Nintendo when its Wednesday announcement goes wide. Fils-Aime told us that while Nintendo, as the retailer, would itself determine the appropriate pricing for each game on a per-title bases, the games themselves would not be vetted by Nintendo. Instead, Nintendo would only check the games for bugs and compatibility, with developers and publishers responsible for securing [a rating lower than AO with the ESRB].' For more, N'Gai has an interview with Reggie Fils-Aime on the subject. Unfortunately, we won't be seeing a finished product until 2008."

Comments

Cool

[GWLlosa]

This idea is excellent. I love using the Wii Virtual Console for the sole benefit of not having to change discs in order to play a game. Adding more games to this category can only be good, and the fact that Nintendo is taking a largely 'hands-off' approach to quality control should provide for a comparatively wide selection.

Re:Cool

[dolson]

CVG: Is Nintendo considering releasing a hard drive to bolster the Wii's memory for all this new content?
Nintendo: No

Read the rest here.

I think it makes more sense for them to allow loading games from the SD card, but they shot that down too. I'd rather not have a bulky drive hanging off the back of my Wii. Kinda ruins the small form factor idea. And the fact that there is a nearly useless SD card slot in the Wii, that just annoys me. There's no reason it couldn't load a tiny ROM from the SD card, even copying it to RAM first, if it needed to... But if the GBA can play ROMs off of SD cards (which it can, if you buy the appropriate adapter), then so too can the Wii.

Maybe the author has a minimum article length?

[ivan256]

A month or so before the March Game Developers Conference, Nintendo's PR agency approached us about a hush-hush new content initiative that the company had been cooking up [...] 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. Shorter, original, more creative games from small teams with big ideas;

So, the same thing that Microsoft and Sony are already doing? Why's it so hush-hush then? Wouldn't they want to tell people ASAP that they're not missing the boat?

Article summary: Wii games for download next year, actual article content with interview next week. The rest is fluff.

Re:Maybe the author has a minimum article length?

[SetupWeasel]

1) Simple probability-if there is a simple 5% failure rate (too high in my book anyway) the probability that any one person will get a defective unit is 1/20 or one in twenty. However the probability that one person will get 5 defective units is (1/20)^5 or (1/3200000) one in three million, two hundred thousand. If the failure rate was so low, only 2 people in the world would share Crecente's fate. The story at 1up about the man with 11 failures would happen once for every 204,800,000,000,000 consoles sold.

To make the second example realistic (make the probability at least one in 10 million, the number of consoles sold) the failure rate would have to be at least 23.1% assuming every box he got had the same probability for failure.

2) They gave him BETA machines. They knew.

3) I'm not going to respond to that. It is ridiculous.

Really?

[Applekid]

... but small garage-style shops as well.

Really? I'll believe it when I see small garage-style shop priced Wii dev kits. Moreover, even from TFA, Nintendo only does a QA check on the games and leaves important things, like ESRB ratings, to the developer.

I'd personally like to see ESRB-free hobbyist-targeted Wii development, maybe like Microsoft's XNA initiative.

Furthermore, it'd be nice to make them available for download for minimal price (as there is minimal COST of pushing bits over a network). But now I'm just being overly wishful.

Re:Really?

[morari]

I'll believe it when I see small garage-style shop priced Wii dev kits. If I remember correctly, the Wii SDK is only $2,000. While that is certainly a lot of money, it's really a drop in the bucket when compared to other consoles. I don't see it being anywhere near impossible for a small, dedicated development team to raise that amount of money.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, while the kit is $2000, it is nowhere near as accessible as that price tag would make it sound. This is the cost, sure, but in order for nintendo to be willing to sell it to you, you need to either be a large, established studio with an existing relationship with nintendo, or you need to be sponsored by such a studio. If you don't fit either of those, you need to be at least an established game company, with headquarters with security and such and a proven track record.

They will most certainly NOT give a wii dev kit to random college students or hobbyists in their garages, whether they can pony up the $2000 or not. I found this out, as a bunch of friends and I were excited by the low price, thinking we could take a stab at it and only be out $2k between us if it didn't work. No such luck, though.

Re:Really?

[Mattintosh]

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.

Re:Great!

[AKAImBatman]

Excite Truck was good, not great.

Sacrilege! If jumping a newly formed mountain at 200MPH then scraping a tree in midair thus resulting in a barrel roll which lands you upside down as you skip off the mountain peaks before diving headlong onto the track where you mysteriously manage to land upright AND get a speed boost for a Nice Landing doesn't bring a smile to your face, I don't know what will. That game is crazy. CRAZY, I tell you. My wife played it and managed to smash, bump, crush, ram, sink, skip, splash, slide, crash, flip, and careen her way through Fiji. Result? S-Class rating!

Excite Truck: The only racing game that rewards bad driving! :P

I'm looking for more little games like the Wii Sports ones that are fun solo, and a ton of fun with friends, and I'm willing to pay for them.

I have heard nothing but good things about Rayman and Elebits, save for that Rayman takes a little bit of time to warm up to. Both make excellent use of the Wii Remote and may be exactly what you're looking for.

Re:Indie Developers

[toolie]

Define "a lot". As I understand it Wii dev kits currently go for $1000 or so--they just haven't been sold to the general public so far.

Last time I checked (when I first really paid attention to the Wii after E3 06 I think it was) the Dev kit was like $2500 (maybe $2000, definitely more than $1000 though). The problem was that the kits were only available to established companies, you had to provide a list of games that your company produced. Hopefully, this initiative changes that restriction. I would still love to get a Dev kit to play around with.

Re: Rayman & Calibration...

[SetupWeasel]

Actually the "sensitivity setting" in the Wii menu refers of the sensitivity of the IR camera in the Wiimote not the motion of the cursor across the screen. It is meant to allow you to filter out dimmer IR sources that may confuse the Wii.

Re:Adventure games

[AKAImBatman]

The largest game on the Virtual console is only 32MB, being Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Indeed. Which would leave only 32MB of memory Subtract 4MB for the N64 RAMBUS memory and you're down to 28. Another 4MB for the expansion pack when in use and we're down to 24. (Though I don't think any games use the expansion pack yet?) 24-28MB is the amount of space the emulator+OS has to fit within. That's not a whole lot of space by modern standards. While I think Nintendo could do it, they may be playing it safe to allow for bigger games in the future.

And the Wii doesn't have 64MB of RAM, it has 88MB.

The Wii has 64MB of GDDR3 main memory, 24MB of 1T-SRAM (!) for the GPU's use, and and extra 3MB of GPU cache/working memory for the framebuffer and whatnot. Basically, the 24MB isn't really open for general purpose usage. At least, that's not how the known specs present it.

Re:Indies? - HUH?

[stratjakt]

the Wii's browser (opera) can play flash, so if you got a wii and internet, you already got a buttload of games to play. I think the parent was thinkign along these lines.

Re:Adventure games

[default luser]

You're not seriously comparing the complexity of a Gameboy emulator to that of a Nintendo 64 emulator, are you?

Sure he is, and with good reason. The DS actually has quite a complex architecture (main CPU, one 3D rasterizer + T&L unit, two 2D rasterizers), with most of the features offered by the N64.

The typical size of N64 emulators on the PC/Mac are in the 1-3MB range, even with all the fancy features you expect. You can also find them in the Sub-1MB range for platforms that are short on memory.

So yes, it is certainly reasonable.

Some advanced features like JITting (an actual possibility since Nintendo knows both their system and their software) will chew through memory like candy.

Why would you waste time with JIT recompilation when you know the source and target platforms, AND control distribution? You can do an optimized conversion before you even offer the game for download, and save yourself the memory.

What you need to develop for the Wii

[LKM]

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.

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