Remember how much Nintendo were talking up the ease of development with the Wii before its launch? Were you then disappointed when you didn’t see original downloadable games at launch? Well now you can cheer up because today, Nintendo have announced WiiWare; a new service which allows developers of all types to make downloadable games for the Wii.
Developers will be able to utilise any of the controller’s at the Wii’s disposal, including the GameCube pad. The games won’t have to get approval from Nintendo, except for bug checking and ironing out any compatibility issues. Everything else is left to the developers, including getting an ESRB rating.
“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 games will be available to buy in the Wii Shop channel and will cost varying prices depending on the content. Downloading the games will work like Virtual Console downloads. The games will have their own channel and can be saved onto SD cards. Support for external hard drives is still unclear.
However there is a downside to all this. We won’t be seeing of any the new service till early 2008. Well let’s just hope it’s worth the wait.
source - wiiplus
