WiiWare Channel Annouced

New content downloadable games on Wii announced!

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=14485

Cool. I wonder what the process/tools will be for developing wii games? Think nintendo will do something like XNA?

Sounds good! I bet "low budget" is still quite a sting though. it will be interesting to see the prices.

Oh! Interesting...very interesting...

I'm with Orca. I wonder what will be needed to develop Wii games.

I hope they release that information soon, as I think my new project would really flourish on the Wii - not so much because of the Wii's controls or anything like that, but simply because the Wii is the undoubtedly going the most prevalent system played by children, and my game will be relying on that demographic.

I wonder how hard it will be to get the good ole Nintendo 'Seal of Approval.'

I think the prices of developing a retail Wii game are quite a bit less than the other consoles so I would guess you can get through Wii development for a reasonable amount ... still will be expensive but probably a little closer to PC dev costs for indies, though still probably a few times the cost. It depends mainly on how they decide to handle QA.

The thing is though. nintendo will check every game before making it available for download. There's no way on earth you'll be able to upload anything you like.

Also, why would they need to charge you for the dev tools. They're going to be making a profit off every download.

You'll have to get a dev kit to make games for this, and if Nintendo has the same licensing rules as they have had in the past, you'll have to be incorporated to get a kit. The dev kits are supposed to be cheap and possibly free for small developers though.

And even if you are incorporated, and get approved for a dev kit, you'll have to code in C. And you'll have to pay probably a couple thousand to have your game reviewed by the ESRB before Nintendo will allow it to be sold.

Also the service won't be available until early 2008.

But on the bright side, there's no Q&A process you need to go through other than getting that rating.

If the devkit is going to be really cheap or free, how unlikely is it that BlitzMax will be able to crosscompile for the Wii in the future? :)
I would love to be able to code games for the Wii in BMax!

We have a few Wii test kits and Wii dev kits at work, and they are not that cheap. We are not small developers tho. A don't know to which extent they will be available to indies.

The dev kits we have at work are not that expensive (well, they would be for me but not for the company) but they are like a 10th of the price of say a Playstation2 devkit. Also, there are several types of kit. There is the black dev box itself (looks like a DIY kit) then a red fronted Wii test station and a green fronted one with a hard drive (might have them the wrong way). All these come at different prices but like I said, they are very cheep to other console dev kits out there.

Yeah I read this too, interesting. So there'll still be a reasonable outlay to sell games via it and they'll have to be in C++. OK.

How much is "not this expensive" exactly and how do i develop games for that distribution?

The Dev kit is arround £1200 but the WiiWare thing thats been announced will probably be a cheeper option, like the Microsoft XNA.

XNA is for free, no devkit needed only a normal retail XBox360, beside of the $99 you pay per year beeing able to publish to the XBox360 but you can't use it commercial on the XBox360 side. This is yet to come with XNA Pro

How much are these pounds in euros?

Hmm, maybe it's a good time to learn about how to prepare for something like this. I'm hoping that the yearly fee for doing WiiWare won't be much more than $50 or so... I can see a lot of us doing C# or C++ versions of our Blitz games on there, should be worth the try, tho.

According to the BBC...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6248780.stm

"Anyone wanting to use the WiiWare tool will need a basic knowledge of programming, said Nintendo. It lets people start creating their game on a PC but it must be fine-tuned and finished on the console itself."

> It lets people start creating their game on a PC but it must be fine-tuned and finished on the console itself.

I'd like to see what they mean by that, although it is probably just a case of testing the game on the console and not actually developing per se.

Hmm, doesn't sound so interesting here...

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/levelup/archive/2007/06/27/reggie-on-his-big-plans-for-a-little-nintendo-wiiware.aspx



It just sounds like they'll be taking smaller games (for internet distribution) from standard Nintendo-affiliated developers, using the current SDK ($2000 or so?). Not quite the hobbiest fantasy some of us might have been entertaining... :/

$2000 is darn near free? If I work really hard for some months and skip food and don't pay my bills I might afford it. :P

Right, and how much would the SDK be for the X360/XNA project be in comparison? I know about the $99/yr. thing, but that's just to subscribe, isn't it? Then it's $300 for VS 2005 Standard Edition (if that version of C# even works with XNA), and then $400 for the Premium Console, so where does that go from there?

> Then it's $300 for VS 2005 Standard Edition (if that version of C# even works with XNA),

XNA is a free download, it works with the free version of C#.

> and then $400 for the Premium Console

Not required to do the development work. Although to get it done would require purchasing a PC version of the 360 controller. I guess that runs about $50 to $75

The $99 per year is required to release the game, and test it on an actual 360, but is not required to do development work

Right, but how would that rate in comparison to the WiiWare costs of development?

> Right, but how would that rate in comparison to the WiiWare costs of development?

That will be hard to say till Nintendo tells us.

I have to say that i'm quite dissapointed about the announcement as it's about money and not fun.

If you're a small company then this is an opportunity to get something released for the Wii but if you're an Indy or beedroomcoder the conditions aren't great. $2500-$10000 for the devkits, you need a firm address and so on.

Again XNA is the much better deal here in my opinion. $99 a years licence, you get the devtool for free and you don't need any devkit at all. Just stick you retail XBOx360 via ethernet to the PC and you even can remote debug your stuff on pc whilst it's running on the XBox360. XNA is crossplatform for win and console, it allows commercial usage on windows. Only weak point is that there is no solution yet to sell your stuff easily on the console side but they want to address this with a pro version in the future.

So bottomline is, for pros interesting, for indies or curious coders no real option.

I'm curious to see what Sony will do in this sector once also Microsoft offers their pro service.

No doubt, but for that you don't need WiiWare.
The Wii DevKit costs 2000$, unlike the ten tousands for the other console ones.


And I don't think that it will be like XNA, but more their libraries they have built up since N64 days, now in a more userfriendly way.
But they actually mentioned this SDK to come long before launch.
Its just that they still do not give more information on what it actually includes ^^


And what sony does: what is doing since 12months+, going down the toilett and re-replacing the CEO ^^
Seeing that Nintendo was able, even if only short, to surpass Sonys market value was kind of a shock, cause sony is working in so many sectors, Nintendo isn't ... shows quite clearly how bad sony is doing its job.

Well, Nintendo s successful but i don't think they are doing a great job. Actually their console has enough weak points and there aren't this many interesting games for the console out.

Sony will look quite better in a few months in my opinion but let's see how it turns out.

Don't know

Show me a single game that needs a PS3 and that I can't play on my PC or any other console.
Sony definitely lacks first party support. Singstar, Buzz and Eye Toy are nice, but who the fuck pays a 20th time for the same crap?
All PS3 I've so far seen are graphically better version of the same stuff I refused to buy for PS2 and the fact that they cost 20% more will definitely take care that I will not buy a PS3 just to get higher resolution crap of the same kind ...

Nintendo at least tries to get new ideas into the market, as MS did with the marketstuff.
Now its up to Sony to show that they can do more than force close Hong Kong base game exports and the like and that they actually can deliver what their costumers payed a massive amount for. Quality not just eye candy!

Yes for me also one big problem with consoles beside of that they are so closed is that the games available are often not interesting enough to make me really buy one. There are exceptions but not really something which makes me rush into a store. Wii Sports Tennis is very nice but then? As already said i'm really curious about LBP for the PS3.

Two things I don't have a Wii (yet) however I've heard of a 'Harry Potter' game that is on release soon that allows you to cast different spells depending on how you 'cast the wand' (the controller). It is this sort of innovative console development that makes people want to but it. As someone already said, if all the PS3 is going to be is sweeter graphics - looks like they're hoping that the HD element will sell the console as opposed to the 'fun/game' side of it that the Wii appears to provide by the bucket load.

@deps LMAO

Would it be possible for 5 Blitz coders to 'join forces' as a inc company to develop Wii software, thus splitting the cost of the dev kit?

@BlitzSupport - James points out that all that glitters ain't gold.