   Iwata talks Indie Dev on Wii Virtual Console
Quote:Regarding the idea behind the Wii platform’s Virtual Console, which will allow for the digital distribution of online games, demos, and other content, Iwata stated in the interview: “When creating a packaged game to be priced at 5,000 yen($40 USD), developers tend to feel the need to create a rich game. Yet it is possible to create a reasonably entertaining game in 2 months with a team of three. Offering such games for 500 yen($4 USD) over a network could lead to a reasonable number of people purchasing it. By offering an environment that allows this, we hope to encourage more developers to pursue basic yet enjoyable gameplay.”There you have it folks. Small teams can develop games for the Virtual Console. Start getting teams together!Source: Gamaustra
  Granted it is not definitive evidence that indies (from hobbyist to near professional) will be allowed to program for the Revolution. But I'm still moist nonetheless.   ;  They have yet to indicate anything about licensing with 'indie' teams.  My friend and I (both 'veterans' of the industry to some degree) inquired about getting our hands on a dev kit and were flatly refused with the excuse that they were only dealing with large, established companies.  It would be fun, but don't get your hopes up.   ;  Of course they won't just hand out development kits to anyone.  Dev kits are extremely expensive.  Nintendo is particulary notorious for making it hard to get one.The indie development they allow us will not be full-blown devkits.  They'll probably make an entirely separate, different devkit for their virtual console, or whatever they decide to put the indie stuff on.  Don't lose hope just yet.  It's simply too early to inquire.   ;  I have to disagree, the pricing for the Wii devkits I've seen is in the range of 2000 dollars (US).  That is extremely affordable, especially in comparison to the other major consoles.  Unless this figure is way off, it seems to me that Nintendo is all for indie dev teams picking up the Wii.  Weeee!!!   ;  While it is exciting, I wouldn't get my hopes up too high.  Nintendo traditionally has a high bar for QA and I don't think they'll let any curious teenager use their online distribution methods with no questions asked.They are absolutely correct about the statement that fun games can be written by three people within two months.  I'd say that's on the high end for many casual games.Remember that many early games from Atari and Activision were developed around those same rules.  Many were with one or two people and less than a month.  Well, I suppose many of you weren't even born back then, so you really can't remember.  :-)With all the tools out there, it is possible for a small team to pump out a pretty good casual game in under a week, easily something that people would pay $4 for in a sparse market.I have personally written, published, and sold a quickie commercial casual game in four days -- I started on Monday, delivered Thursday.  The first six hours were the gameplay and internals and gameplay data structures, the rest of the time was spent on polishing the UI and creating a bunch of levels.  The most difficult part of this type of game is polishing the graphical display and creating levels, since gameplay, logic, and simple sound/music are often trivial for a tiny game.  Think about the gameplay logic behind the popular game Zuma.  Fundamentally it is an array of integers (the colors of the balls), and inserting/removing items from the list.  The rest of the gameplay comes from rules deciding where the insertion takes place, based on the angle of the mouse pointer and the description inside the level's data file.  That's something most CS college students could do in a homework assignment or two.A 2-month/3-man game isn't a big deal for many casual games.  It can even be a welcome relief to professionals used to 18+ month projects.  [grin]   ;  Far far too much confusing of terminology here. When Nintendo talks about Developers, they mean professional developers, companies, or teams with established business premises, IP, content, etc.  When Nintendo talks about indies they mean, independant developers, ie development companies/teams that are not owned by Nintendo or a publisher. When Nintendo talks about producing games with a team of 3, what they are saying is that a company can produce content by only commiting 3 members of staff to the game, and it'll not need to be a full on 40 man project.To be brutally honest, to a corporate entity like Nintendo, small hobby based companies/teams simply do not exist in their corporate mentality and will not be catered for. If by some miracle, someone somewhere does allow an SDK to go out to the public, Yaroze style, it will be nothing more than a marketing test to see if they can encourage the set up of small development teams (ie proper companies) to produce content.Please try to bear this in mind when you see a corporate speech written up like this.A number of very small companies I know of, who are actually doing DS/Gamecube work freelancing at home or in very small premises, are being refused Wii SDK's because they cannot provide a suitible business case to be given developer status. That means they can't provide accounts, staffing plans,independant business premises, security, etc.....So if established Nintendo developers cannot get status due to their small size and turnover, how is a homebased indie going to manage?Nowhere, not once, has anyone from Nintendo said, "We'll provide an avenue for home based hobby coders and teams to get to Market"....becuase thats what you should be looking for, until you see that, the doors are closed....firmly.;  Well...what I assume they would do is give out a small devkit for the virtual console, which doesn't allow for mroe advanced features such as 3d or wifi. I guess we will have to wait and see I suppose.   