Indies continue to wait for Wii support

via water cooler

Back in November, I revealed in a column at Serious Games Source that despite their stated intention to support independent work, Nintendo wasn't planning to review independent developer applications for Wii dev kits until January 2007. We just got an update from Nintendo of America, and it looks like those of us interested in making Wii games, but who don't have a publisher contract, will have to wait even longer.

According to our contact, the Wii Independent Developer Program is "on hold" until the end of the month, because "the Wii publishers are taking all of the available inventory, and more." In other words, Nintendo doesn't have enough kits to cover the demand for all those crappy licensed games, let alone more original work. I've confirmed that others heard the same story at D.I.C.E. last week.

The dev kit situation mirrors the Wii itself. Last November I also lamented about the absurd fanboy commitment required to obtain a Wii, and I wondered how Nintendo could claim to appeal to ordinary people if nobody could get a device. Today, three months later, it's still almost impossible to get a Wii -- or a DS for that matter, the two game consoles most likely to appeal to the so-called "non-gamer."

I still have a lot of interest in developing for Wii at the studio, but the lack of dev kits combined with the lack of retail units makes me worry. Is Nintendo's story about mass-appeal just marketing rhetoric? At the rate we're going, independent games of any kind won't be a reality until 2008 at least, and we still don't know how likely Nintendo is to license unusual games for the system. Maybe by that time the retail stock situation will have resolved itself, at least. There's no point making games for a machine nobody can buy.