Dan Adelman (middle) spreading the word

Dan Adelman's job title of Business Development Manager may not reveal much in itself, but as explained to us late last year, he's the man responsible for working with and encouraging small developers to bring their games to Nintendo's eShop platforms. It's an approach that seems to have been bringing increasing dividends, with the 3DS eShop in particular flourishing over the last two years. As for the Wii U eShop, it's still early days, but there have been some excellent titles already with a good number on the horizon for the remainder of 2013.

Speaking to Joystiq, Adelman reiterated the message that Nintendo is opening the doors and spreading the word to developers that its platforms are ready for business.

Historically, Nintendo has seemed kind of hard to approach, kind of like there's a closed system where if a developer already knows somebody at Nintendo or has some kind of 'in,' they're in, but otherwise there's no way to interface with the company. I think we're putting a lot of effort into changing that and making ourselves more accessible, so I really want to make sure that people realize that it's actually pretty easy now – and we're trying to make it easier – to work with us and release games on our systems.

Various restrictions in the past included a requirement to have a registered office address, as well as punishing sales thresholds on the Wii Shop, but those have been stripped away. There are also opportunities for those with development talent but no previous experience or notable portfolio, with Adelman stating that "if you're actively working on a game, that should be sufficient."

Nintendo seems to be gaining the attention of developers, with the recent Wii U developer's website — launched during the Game Developers Conference — drawing over 1000 applications, which are still being processed. Adelman also told Joystiq that, all going well, there could be 20-30 "new indie games" on the Wii U eShop by the Holidays.

Right now it's still in the early stages, particularly for Wii U. I think 3DS is a much more mature platform in terms of the volume of games. There's still a relatively small number of indie games that are on the Shop, but we've got a whole bunch more coming this holiday. It takes that much time for games to go through the pipeline and finish development and release, so I think we'll see a lot more content coming through.

In terms of purchasing eShop content from smartphones and computers, Adelman stated that he wasn't directly involved but that gamers will be able to "log onto the site and set [purchases] up for download so that once they get home, it'll be available for them and they can have that at their fingertips whenever they need it.".

It may have endured some quiet spells to date, but the upcoming line-up on the Wii U eShop does have a promising range of multi-platform and exclusives coming, even if firm release dates are largely elusive so far. If Dan Adelman's expectations are met, we could have plenty to download in the coming months.

[source joystiq.com, via joystiq.com]