Bonsai Barber was certainly a-peeling, though.

Martin Hollis was director and producer on N64 shooters GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark, but in more recent times his Zoonami studio created WiiWare hit Bonsai Barber, published by Nintendo. In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Hollis speaks out about the support received from Nintendo, the service's fine points and its biggest downfall: the lack of mainstream media coverage.

Whilst Hollis praises the slimmer array of games compared to the App Store's overwhelming catalogue and talks about his positive experience with Bonsai Barber, which enjoyed considerable TV advertising as part of a high-profile campaign from Nintendo earlier this year. Overall though, Hollis seems unhappy with the amount of effort going into popularising WiiWare from the most important source: Nintendo itself.

Q: Given that, why do you think that not as much attention is given to WiiWare? What's stopping people from seeing the quality that is there?

Martin Hollis: That's a very good question. Apple have had such massive success in capturing media attention - they've sucked all of the air out of it. I don't know that Nintendo's putting a great deal of energy into trying to generate PR for WiiWare or DSiWare.

Although Hollis acknowledges Nintendo is starting to take digital distribution more seriously, his complaints echo comments from earlier this year when several developers spoke out about Nintendo's lack of emphasis on WiiWare.

Zoonami received the backing of Nintendo with a TV advertising campaign and publishing as well, but in the wider view of things Hollis clearly feels not enough is being done to popularise the services.

[source gamesindustry.biz]