Topic: Why does the Wii U attract a disproportionate amount of sub-par indie titles?

So, being a PS4 and Wii U owner, it has come to my attention that in comparison, the Wii U attracts a disproportionate amount of sub-par indie titles, which is really a shame because Nintendo really needs the indie developers to fill in the voice from the absence of major third party publishers.

That's not say that either system is completely devoid of either really good indie titles (Shovel Knight, Resogun, Velocity 2X, Transistor, Steam World Dig), or really crappy ones (The Letter, Basement Crawl). But for the Wii U, we are seeing a rise in super cheap indie titles that the PS4 is devoid of for the most part, despite it's popularity.

But yeah, is it because the Wii U still has some of those "Wii" image problems? IE, the perception by developers that only a younger audience uses the system..............I just really don't get it with all of the flappy bird clones and what not.........

Because Indie developers don't have the money to make a version for every platform so they go with the best seller.

I would like to imagine it's because the Wii U development costs would be lower than the PS4's. I don't know for a fact.

This could be a sign that the Wii U is just THAT easy to develop for. If it's really simple, why wouldn't there be a ton of games good or bad?

Most indies go PC route first so PS4 would be the easier out of the two to develop for, I think it is mostly down to reaching the largest amount of people in the easiest /cheapest/quickest way possible.

I wonder if it has to do anything with a small fee (or the lack of one in general?) that indie developers must pay to slot your title for an eShop release.

With some white tape and higher free's, your kinda getting rid of those developers who may be more akin to publish to shovel ware on IOS, as long as you don't become too restrictive like Microsoft did for a small bit.

Well Nintendo doesn't chase popular Indies down like Sony does

bingo! i'm betting the license fees are non existant and nintys percentage of each purchase is low.

They kinda should...............especially with the likes of Renegade Kid and Shin'en Multimedia.

I remember reading there isn't any kind of quality control when it comes to releasing indie games on WiiU - maybe when it comes to PS4 you have to go through more stages, including fees et al?! I dunno.
Lack of competition and bad handling by the press may be another factor. I mean, you can release Spikey Walls today and you automatically get 3 head news on one of the major Nintendo sites on the internet + a 4/10 review (the same score Yoshi's Story 64 got) + a number of people who buys the game just to piss off people who don't want this crap on the eShop.
It's a number of factors but the audience surely has its fair share of responsibilities.

A combination of small fees and HTML5 is my bet, the same reason it got XType+. It cuts both ways. Anyways, I'd rather the platform got a flood of crappy titles with a handful of great ones than nothing. I can ignore games that I don't want, I can't play games that aren't there.

I think they are more interested in partnerships like with Hyrule Warriors and Bayonetta 2. Also Nintendo makes it pretty easy for developers to make a game on Wii U. There are many cheap/free game engines that work on Wii U. I wouldn't be surprised to find out if RPG Maker worked on Wii U lol

This logic works both ways. Wii U has sold double the amount of software as PS4 has. The PS4 has more systems out there, but that isn't automatically translating to software sales. So the reasoning to release indie games on Wii U would be that indie games are selling on there, and the reasoning to support PS4 would be that there are more consoles out there.

This. Sony has paid for a handful of higher quality indie games.

Nintendo jumped on the indie scene for Wii U much sooner than Sony did for PS4, too. Nintendo made it easy for indie devs to get onto Wii U. It just so happens that some of them are low quality. That isn't anything that is really reflective on Nintendo, but the indie supporters that are supporting them. Nintendo said, at their last developer conference, that Steam games using Unity might as well show up on Wii U. Their best recent example was Shovel Knight selling more on Nintendo platforms than PC.

Being a bigger indie developer means you have more in common with a AAA developer effectively being the middle tier meaning you tend o target platforms with bigger install bases or make deals with the console makers, to get your game out there.

Another big reason is due to the Nintendo Web Framework the Wii U is the easiest and least expensive console to develop or port mobile games for. At least until next year if Windows 10 makes the xbox one take the cheap development spot.

I know it's unfair, but give the indies time.

Eventually you'll have all the silly bad minigames you want on the PS4 too.

Yeah, props to Sony for focusing on quality indie stuff so much, but PS4's success makes shovelware inevitable. This is only disproportionate to Sony and probably only for right now.

I do think this is a bit unfair though. There's a few bad games coming here or there, but there are MANY worse examples out there. Wii was a worse example, iOS is EASILY so much worse. Have you gone to the actual indie section of XBLA? Shovelware is inevitable and unless it becomes so overwhelming that it actually overshadows quality games (which despite Miiverse turning a couple of these games into a huge running gag, eShop charts say this clearly hasn't happened).

It attracts anything that uses Unity (Problem is there is very little that is any good).

I much preferred Wiiware. (Stuff I wanted / Not buggy).

Somebody has never used Steam, I see.

Fixed the for you. I think the only difference is that the eShop doesn't segregate the real indie stuff from the "indie" stuff.

Here are some possible reasons:

• The issue is more a NoA eShop issue than anything else, since the costs involved to put a title on the American eShop are very low and the whole process is straightforward (no fees for PEGI rating, etc).
• Unity license is included with the SDK, and the license is payed by Nintendo.
• Included HTML5 support in the SDK
• Nintendo has said that they will not restrict any title to release or influence its pricing, as long as there's a good initial presentation document and there are no game breaking bugs or interface issues found in the Lot Check.
• Nintendo fans starting to create games, without any education or earlier experience of game development. Given the number of users on any gaming site that "know" how to run Nintendo themselves, I'd say the number of bad titles are fairly low yet.
• Lack of time and effort put into the product by the developer. (RCMADIAX will releases 7 new titles from now until June 30, 2015. Teslagrad apparently took 27,000 man-hours to develop.)
• Lack of field testing, or lack of adjustment to the test players' feedback.