And hopefully we'll see more of this!

Hot on the heels of Sony's PSP "Minis" program, Nintendo is about to launch something similar for its DSiWare download service.

Like the Minis service, Nintendo's new initiative will make it easier for indie developers to publish their own games through DSiWare. Nintendo will keep the current pricing structure of 200 ($2), 500 ($5) and 800 ($8) Nintendo Points, and will charge developers different royalty rates depending on the size of their games.

To put it in perspective, a game smaller than 20MB could cost 500 points; anything bigger will see the royalty rate payable to Nintendo increase. With this in effect, larger and more ambitious games will sell as premium content, while apps and puzzlers (and chunks of already existing DS games!) can go out cheap.

One negative that has been brought to bear is that some developers could go for massive audio/video compression in their games to get a cheaper price tag, which could have a detrimental effect on the quality of their games. Still, it's encouraging to see that Nintendo is doing something to encourage the indie developers: the service really needs something to bring it up to the standard that WiiWare is setting as of late!

[source pocketgamer.co.uk]