This looks like a big one: Nintendo has announced WiiWare, online distribution of new Wii games for developers.
OK, but the real news is this:
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 an E for Everyone, E10+ for Everyone 10 or older, T for Teen or M for Mature rating from the Entertainment Software Rating Board.
Let’s wait for the exact details to come in, but so far it looks like we may be seeing the first hole in the fence around the current consoles: The possibility that anyone can publish a console game without platform owner approval.
Was it inevitable? I am sure CD- and DVD-player manufacturers know that the variety of content is a boon to business, not a threat, and now a console manufacturer is coming around.
How will the submissions process work? How will they distribute dev kits?
What will happen with XNA now?
Over the last couple of years it seems that the big 3 have been silently accomodating the rootsier gaming community: Providing cheaper indie titles on live channels, emulated retro-gaming (Wii, XBL,) homebrew (Net-Yaroze(?) YA-Basic on the PS2, “other-os” on PS3 and now open-source on the Wii.) Exciting stuff, I wonder if they are going to actively support developers with devkits etc (as Jesper notes) or just tolerate the homebrew which will innevitably emerge…If they do supply devkits I wonder what the access to the hardware will be like ?
I think it’s rather disturbing that the big boys are coming to play with us. While this is great now (and I would love to play supermario bros on Wii, thanks Nintendo) for all the devs that can make contracts and get their games published on Wii, my suspicion is that the big boys will get the small boys to their studios to do the small games, and the Indie game scene has what happened to the PC-scene in the late 80’s, early 90’s – Mr. Independent become QubicleDev.