Trine 2: Director's Cut is available in the Wii U eShop right now in North America — and will be on launch in Europe — and the game's developer, Frozenbyte, has had nothing but praise for the way Nintendo is approaching downloadable gaming.
In an interview with IGN, marketing manager at Frozenbyte, Mikael Haveri, confirmed that Nintendo isn't just reaching out to indie developers, it's giving them a lot more freedom; he made clear associations with similar practices used by Apple and Steam.
That's what we love about the new eShop. We have the power to price our products as we please, with just some basic guidelines from the big guys. The step to this is purely from Nintendo's side and they clearly see that [their] previous instalments have not been up to par. We can set our own pricing and actually continuing on that by setting our own sales whenever we want. It is very close to what Apple and Steam are doing at the moment, and very indie friendly.
Currently on other consoles, indie developers are having a tough time generating updates and patches to their games simply because they are being forced to pay in order to do so. With Xbox Live Arcade, for example, creating the first update will cost the company nothing, however any more will incur charges; this is something small developers can struggle to justify financially. The Wii U eShop will be different though – every single update needed will be free and developers are encouraged to perform as many as they want in order to create the best gaming experience possible.
They [Nintendo] have pushed away all of the old methods that have been established before. Simply put they've told us that there are no basic payments for each patch (which were pretty high on most platforms) and that we can update our game almost as much as we want. For indie developers this is huge.
The same can be said for DLC — should Frozenbyte choose to release more added content Nintendo won't charge them for it. Things such as this could really allow small developers to spread their wings and create more content than ever before on Wii U. Haveri acknowledged Nintendo's mistakes in the past saying it was them who “messed up the worst" in the last generation of gaming, however he feels the company is definitely moving in the right direction, especially where small developers are concerned.
Allowing small developers to set their own prices and making the additions of updates, patches and downloadable content free will certainly make developing games for the Wii U eShop more appealing. Let us know what you think about all this in the comments below.
[source uk.ign.com]
Comments 11
This is satisfying news
ditto I'm excited at the possibilities.... one thing I love is diversity especially in entertainment.... and nintendo eshop will have a system to facilitate this... fingers crossed
If you look at this launch, Nintendo clearly learned from their mistakes. Wii U will be gaming's heaven!
Hope they sell so the Wii U will get as many good games as possible.
Also hopefully the free patching won't mean we'll get a lot of unnecessarily "broken" games when they're released. This could hurt the reputation of the eShop rather quickly.
Whoa. This is amazing"
I've had the feeling for a while that while the Wii U may struggle further down the line getting multi platform games,it will be a haven for amazing and innovative indie games that really use the Gamepad.This news further confirms this feeling.
@OorWullie
Nicalis(publishes lots of indie games)
Frozenbyte
Gajin games
Ackkstudios
Renegade kid
2D boy
Pwnee studios
Shin'en
knapnok
Awesomeblade studios
And more
Yeah I agree. Tons of indie devs on Wii U
It sounds like Nintendo's policies on the Wii U eshop are a massive step up from that of its predecessor.
This is proof that Nintendo has learned from their mistakes. This is the right approach to attract developers to the Wii U.
This is fantastic to hear. I think I might be most excited that developers can put their game on sale anytime they want. I love me some sales.
This is great news. I'm honestly surprised Nintendo have made such a step from the (allegedly) nightmarish conditions WiiWare developers had to work under, but couldn't be happier they did so.
More and more of my favourite titles in recent years have come from indies, yet they keep getting the short end of the stick from the big three when trying to get their work on their systems. Seeing Ninty take a more flexible approach is a real breath of fresh air.
If Wii U becomes the go-to for quality indie games I can easily see it becoming my console of choice for the foreseeable future.
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