GDC 09: Some WiiWare Devs Not Being Paid?

At this year's Game Developers Conference a talk called Independent Game Sales revealed that Nintendo has a minimum download threshold for WiiWare games that must be met before the developer is paid. The speaker, Gamasutra publisher and Independent Game Festival chairman Simon Carless, said this number is somewhere in the mid-quadruple digits for America and low quadruples for other territories. Unless a game passes over this number of downloads, the developer doesn't get paid at all.

Carless estimated that multiple independent WiiWare games will not pass the threshold and not return any of the developer's investment. He also guessed that this threshold is in place to deter developers from tossing loads of shovelware onto the service.

There have been two primary barriers for little-known games on WiiWare. Until recently, storage has been an issue on the Wii. This is now fixed as of last month, but another hurdle remains: WiiWare games don't offer any sort of trial, so gamers can't check them out first to see if they like them as they can on Xbox Live Arcade.

As of this writing, Nintendo could not be reached for comment. The company has not released any official information about the sales of WiiWare games. Carless has heard that Nintendo might be changing this minimum threshold policy so that developers can eventually cash a paycheck from WiiWare.

http://uk.wii.ign.com/articles/972/972642p1.html