wraggster
September 11th, 2013, 20:53
If the numbers coming from Nintendo are to be believed, indie development interest in Wii U is at astronomic levels.
Nintendo’s manager of business development Dan Adelman reckons that the platform holder’s recently launched Wii U development website (https://wiiu-developers.nintendo.com/) is attracting some serious interest.
“It's been overwhelming. We've gotten probably over 1,000, I don't know if we've hit 2,000, developers with really wide-ranging levels of experience,” he told GameSpot (http://uk.gamespot.com/features/talking-indies-with-nintendo-6414220/).
“We've got some who have recently left their jobs in mainstream publishers and are starting a new company, or have been indies for a while. All the way to high school students who are thinking of getting into game development and want to know more about it.
“So one of the challenges is going through and it's ultimately a resource allocation issue at that point. We want to support everybody, so how do we do that in the most effective manner and how do we prioritize in just making sure that--our intent is to support everyone, really. The underlying philosophy is that if you can make a game on our systems, we want to find a way for you to be able to do that.”
Nintendo’s efforts to court the indie community go far beyond simply a new website, Adelman adds, claiming that the company is still working on correctly communicating the extent of its commitment.
“Developers seem to be overwhelmingly positive. Some of the major changes that we've made actually still haven't been well communicated yet,” he added. “We've put the message out there and I think we have to keep hammering home the message because we need to make sure that people hear about it. We used to have a lot of barriers on the way to releasing games on our platforms.
“One example would be, we used to require that developers work out of an office that's separate from their home, and that was a big barrier for a lot of indie developers. And we got rid of that. And still, I talk to developers today who will say, ‘Yeah, I'd love to make a game for a Nintendo platform, but I work at home.’ So I have to say ‘Actually, about six months ago, maybe it was nine months ago, we announced that we changed that policy.’”
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/nintendo-has-received-wii-u-interest-from-over-1-000-indie-devs/0120867
Nintendo’s manager of business development Dan Adelman reckons that the platform holder’s recently launched Wii U development website (https://wiiu-developers.nintendo.com/) is attracting some serious interest.
“It's been overwhelming. We've gotten probably over 1,000, I don't know if we've hit 2,000, developers with really wide-ranging levels of experience,” he told GameSpot (http://uk.gamespot.com/features/talking-indies-with-nintendo-6414220/).
“We've got some who have recently left their jobs in mainstream publishers and are starting a new company, or have been indies for a while. All the way to high school students who are thinking of getting into game development and want to know more about it.
“So one of the challenges is going through and it's ultimately a resource allocation issue at that point. We want to support everybody, so how do we do that in the most effective manner and how do we prioritize in just making sure that--our intent is to support everyone, really. The underlying philosophy is that if you can make a game on our systems, we want to find a way for you to be able to do that.”
Nintendo’s efforts to court the indie community go far beyond simply a new website, Adelman adds, claiming that the company is still working on correctly communicating the extent of its commitment.
“Developers seem to be overwhelmingly positive. Some of the major changes that we've made actually still haven't been well communicated yet,” he added. “We've put the message out there and I think we have to keep hammering home the message because we need to make sure that people hear about it. We used to have a lot of barriers on the way to releasing games on our platforms.
“One example would be, we used to require that developers work out of an office that's separate from their home, and that was a big barrier for a lot of indie developers. And we got rid of that. And still, I talk to developers today who will say, ‘Yeah, I'd love to make a game for a Nintendo platform, but I work at home.’ So I have to say ‘Actually, about six months ago, maybe it was nine months ago, we announced that we changed that policy.’”
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/nintendo-has-received-wii-u-interest-from-over-1-000-indie-devs/0120867