The No demo thing kind of sucks... but let me put it into perspective...
The rest of the world lives under the same conditions when they are buying full-priced console games.

At least Asia does anyway. I'm from the U.S., and I took game rental and demo's for granted.

When I moved to Japan, I found that game rentals were illegal, though music rental was not (weird isn't it?!). After several years of living in Japan, I moved to Singapore. No game rentals either. No demo's and no try before you buy!

Coming from that perspective, I don't think its a HUGE deal. Its unfortunate, but I don't think its a deal breaker.

chogaijin

this is ridiculous. I hate their so-called "delivery" method.

There have been many times shopping for the Virtual Console where I have picked up a game one week and then come the next monday, regret that purchase because a game I liked more has just come out that I no longer have the points for T.T

and the least they could do in that case would be to allow demos, but even that's a no-no. I'm not impressed in the slightest.

Sandbox_Emperor

I'm absolutely sure a trailer of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King is going to wow me so much I have to take your word for it unquestionably without a hint of empirical knowledge. Is Elmers a required nasal inhalant at Nintindo these days?

KeroseneClimax

has anyone actually looked at a lot of the announced titles? at least they all (IMO) look like quality releases.... besides, SE is one of the forerunners... that CAN'T be a bad thing... right? Besides, I think Wiiware looks to have more full games than arcadey-type games.... and hopefully the price-range will reflect this. (aka, arcade games costing less)

stealthpengu

@Raziel3333: What about Mario Galaxy? THE game for real gamers on the Wii... Honestly... It's the consummate game. Super Paper Mario is pretty awesome, too. Hell, I AM a wii fan, I'm just not a fan of Nintendo corporate policy of taking a huge crap on the hardcores in public, even if they do give us what we want in private.

bobtheduck

ok at first i was excuseing nintendo cause it was their first adtempt at a solid online interface...but not its just like..."yes were going to make good games but were gonna mix them with the terrible games and show you a video of each and you pay us money to find out which one sucks! ISN'T THAT FUN?!"

god..i swear nintendo if it wasn't for zelda, metroid, supersmash brothers, and Mario kart... *shakes fist*

Raziel3333

no deal nintendo. bring it now. sony says do you need it. do you want it..

dexterr

@ph15h: Nintendo's dev kit policy wrt WiiWare is sadly no different from their dev kit policy wrt boxed software, be it for DS or Wii. Very chicken-and-egg.

Torgen thinks AAA means "Costs $60"

@phinehas:
I hear ya there. If they gave devs the option to make a demo for people to test their games out before they buy them, it'd be a good way for us all to shake off the feeling that WiiWare's going to be home to tons of shovelware.

After all, the only people who wouldn't want us to demo their games before we buy the are people who know we wouldn't BUY them if we tried them first.

Archaotic

hmm... oh well. I hardly ever downloaded demos any way. But seeing as how the Great vs Holy shit this game sucks scale vary so widely on the Wii, I wish I could demo.

Indie gamers would have been nice.

My MyBook Essentials is still yearning for some Wii Action.

ph15h

way to half-ass the online space again Nintendo

Jabbertrack

@Archaotic: I want demos as much as the next guy, but I imagine there must be some benefits to not having 'em, otherwise why wouldn't they do 'em?

My guesses are 1) to save the developers time so they can spend it working on the game from start to finish instead of sidetracking a bit to make a demo. And, consequently, 2) so that the game would be released a bit faster.

Those are my guesses, and those reasons, in and of themselves, are "good". But it might not be a worth trade off for most gamers. It would be nice if the OPTION for a demo was in place, though.

phinehas

@Archaotic:
@ TORGEN THINKS AAA MEANS "COSTS $60"

I got it now, thanks.

NeoAkira

I hope the rumor spy from EGM was right about WWF No Mercy coming to Wii via Wii ware. that is a day 1 purchase for me. greatest wrestling game of all time.

zanzibarlegend

Uhg. "We're really focusing on not requiring the developers to make expensive demos..."

This is very vague. While it's clearly stated that demos are not required, the interview doesn't say anything about whether or not a demo can be put out if the developer wants to. Hopefully they will allow demos, but not require them. Somehow I'm not too hopeful though. :/

slacker164

oh, you can "demo" VC games alright

if you know what i mean

(and i know you know what i mean)

in closing ;-D

108

No demos? /cry

On a side note, Yahtzee's latest vid (from GDC) is hilarious.

[www.escapistmagazine.com]

unmarkedone

@gamadaya:
It's really too bad that Nintendo seems to be taking a "one step forward, two steps back" approach with their online service...every time they announce something related to it, it has some catch that makes us gamers cringe, since Sony and Microsoft have already set a perfectly working precedent that Nintendo seems to be ignoring solely for the sake of being different.

Nobody can spin it to say that "no demos" is a good thing. Nobody. Even my diehard Nintendo fanboy friend would be hard-pressed to say that's a good move on Ninty's part.

Couple that with Sakurai's statement in his interview with IGN that Brawl won't be getting ANY downloadable content via WiiWare and we just have a missed opportunity of epic proportions.

Archaotic

Ugh. If they have games, release games. Intentionally withholding won't make people buy things they don't want just for kicks.

Maldron

I'm somewhat less than impressed. Then again, I like my wii, but I don't expect great features. No demos? I can live with that. I'm a little more interested however by everything else that was mentioned.

FeatherNET

100 Games at launch sounds sexy.

But NO DEMOS makes me say NO GO!

Sailorcancer

@NeoAkira: VC are old games. WiiWare is originals.

Torgen thinks AAA means "Costs $60"

@NeoAkira:
WiiWare is games made for the Wii to be smaller, downloadable titles instead of full-disc fare. Virtual Console is downloadable games from older consoles.

Archaotic

So "available" now means "not available"?

@Archaotic:
Hell yeah. I hate that Nintendo doesn't offer demos. That's why I love Xbox live.

gamadaya

edit: indie game devlopers

musicgangATL

looks like xna is officially the indie gamers choice now...the potential for wii ware woulda been way higere if they allowed more

musicgangATL

They must be taking a note out of iTunes "hey listen to the really quiet intro of the song, don't you really want to buy it even though you have no idea what the rest sounds like" magical book of corporate wisdom.

Goodie.

Oh well. As long as the vids are at least relevent and I have the internet for reviews...I can't be too pissed if it keeps the cost of the games lower.

red_queen

What exactly is the difference between WiiWare and VC again? I really can't tell.

NeoAkira

No demos means a lot less sales. Not a smart move, but not exactly surprising, since they aren't bothering to offer demos on Wii or DS games either.

Zerozaki Ishiki

I bet 100 Nintendo fanboys would be praising this news if their forums were still open...even though nothing in here is particularly good news.

It's a complete step back from what Microsoft announced today.

AZRoboto

@Archaotic: Agreed. The no demo factor makes it hard for me to make a purchase. I usually look at something and wait a while before i buy it. IT sucks that you need to be part of a bigger company to get into WiiWare. Also its not that cheap? How much could that mean Luke?

Shindokie: Kotaku's Whore

When are they going to allow us to use hard drives or at least read directly off of SD cards?

reddevil

Oh, and the link to the IGN interview actually leads to this article instead.

ninjablaze

Nintendo's really starting to get on my nerves with this whole "no demos, a short 30 second video is enough to persuade you to waste money on our game" approach.

ninjablaze

I'm pumped for this. They won't all be gems, for sure, but there's gotta be some good stuff on the way.

phinehas

No demos, huh? That's...kinda sucky. No, cancel that, that's really sucky. I've been burned one time too many by Virtual Console games that ended up being lousy, so I don't think I'm gonna make much use of WiiWare unless the titles on it are so unbelievably awesome my eyes explode just from seeing the impressions of them here on Kotaku.

Archaotic

...What's the point of publically announcing that your are planning to withhold 97 titles which you could be releasing?

Sounds kinda... masochistic.

Moonshadow101

I could care less about more downloable games for the Wii unless Wii owners actually get a fucking long term storage device that can both hold and let Wii owners access their content. The SD card bullshit go around that Nintendo came up with is just absofuckinglutely worthless. My wii can't hold any more games and I'm not buying an SD card. Release a hard drive you idiots.

Gagamus

Why are demos suddenly so important? I dont remember downloading any demos for GCN, PS2, Dreamcast, Gameboy, NES, N64, Genesis, oranyothersystemevermade.

mizzle

Regardless of some of these "limitations" I'm still optimistic about Wii Ware and fairly excited about trying out some of the games.

Friend

While the no demo thing is very disappointing. I'm not quite going to be jumping on the "AW NOEZ NINTENO IZ DA SUCKEZ!!!"

If I'm curious about a game (and I am about two already LostWinds and the one Kotaku had up here forget the name). I can do some research on it myself, or read one of the gazillion reviews that's going to drop 30secs after the game is available for download, and use that to help form my opinion.

You guys talking about "Oh nintendo is taking steps back for online gaming..."

While I personally don't agree with what their doing, let them move at their own pace and figure it out. I personally am looking for the WiiWare channel and the demo preview channel.

Bottom line is people aren't just going to start selling their Wii's because they've failed to jump fully on the bandwagon.

FunKrusher

@Archaotic: PSN is the same way and I've been burned 3 times by it so I no longer buy PSN games.

Demo's would be a very good idea and I highly doubt it would cost a dev much at all to just release a small piece of the game as a demo.

True you cant dl demo's for VC games but alot of us played them already in our youth, thats why we buy them. If we really wanted to try them we could get a rom.

parad0x360

Oh BTW with the SD card issues and console number?

I believe that it's not relaly completely safe anwyays... I mean You can reassign your Miis if you download them and change thier numbers... you can change where they belong to too O_o

pyropetey

Whats the worst thing about this? No bedroom developers =(

Sadly this is overall the worst announcement I've heard... I don't think that the entirety of WiiWare should be disregarded however. XNA definitely seemed like a choice of entry for me but in the end looks like a lame attempt to make their system look more attractive, yes you can get XNA games running on windows and subsequently the 360... but the barriers to entry to actually retail a game? Thats a whole different matter...

on the subject of tomsamson whose claim of WiiWare barrier of entry... and the Wii's innately "casual" focus aren't actually faults. I don't see why any developer would shun the Wii from a small games project perspective, with a huge audience and low costs requirement I'd actually be more assured in developing a WiiWare game than an XNA game who's audience caters hardcore for the most part and are likely to be less open than a Wii gamer would. I think your team should 100% look into WiiWare, you've already established yourself as a developer... signing up with Ninty should be a piece of cake... seriously..

In the end the in between of these two services are basically this:

1) XNA lets wannabe developers develop all they want and run it on their system... you just cant get into the market well and you need a load of cash

2) WiiWare lets wannabe developers easily into the market... assuming you can establish yourself as a developer first :P with a mediocre amount of cash

So does anyone know how easy it is to become a licensed developer? From what I've read up... it means i gotta have a bloody office -_-;;... I dont believe a team of 2-3 is too off as long as the game samples I've got are decent right?

pyropetey

@Deozaan: I did a double take on that as well

bearhino

Hmmm...Small developers of big companies. I have a feeling that Sonic Team might make a new Sonic game for Wii Ware. Maybe even Team Ninja if things go well with Dragon Sword on the DS.

KM91

@Yin:
But you can access that data from a PC easily.
1) Copy a channel to SD card
2) Insert SD card into card reader for PC
3) Done!

Hell, I have backups of my VC channels on my computer right now! And over a year later, noone's managed to crack the security on them yet.

BPM IIDX 8th style

Having worked on XBLA titles, I can tell you that the demo system adds considerable time and money to the development cycle. I'd rather that effort go into the complete game. As long as sites continue to review downloadable content, no one is flying completely blind anyway.

Sustenance

@Moonshadow101: Releasing them all on the same day would probably cause a riot among the people that made them.

If you had made a Wiiware game, would you rather have your it go up against 2 others at once or 99?

brent_w

No demos for the games sounds bad :( Atleast we get trailers I suppose. I look forward to the service though.

Irenicus-the one and only

I think something has been missed a bit here. There are no demos to decrease the entry costs for indie developers (who are certainly NOT cut out of the process.) There's an interview over on destructoid ([www.destructoid.com])
with an indie developer who switched over from 360 to Wii precisely because of the lower entry costs and design barriers to indie development from nintendo and because microsoft was demanding a demo (and also, strangely, size restrictions.)

ajay42

@WaterMedia: that is to suggest that there won't be commercials for the wiiware games on tv. on online. or that they won't be reviewed like the VC games are.

frank0127

I love my Zelda and Mario, but I honestly hate Nintendo as a company. They seem to try and find ways to make their services subpar and anti-consumer. Every time they announce something, they give little details and I think of all the great possibilities. Then they give us all the details and every great possibility is completely trashed.

Darkest Daze

@Doomstink: because the big companies mostly use the wii for quick cash in games to finance their bigger titles for ps3 and 360

tomsamson

If it isn't easy or cheap to get a game on the Wii, how is there so much drivel on the shelves?

Doomstink

@lordjoebill:

Everybody's Nintendo Channel came out in Japan quicker because the game companies there are much well closer. A US or Euro they would have to translate and then sub or dub the interviews commericals etc.

Yetanotheruninspiredscreename

I thought this was Nintendo's answer to XNA. Now it's more like their answer to PSN, which is a question no one asked...

boopadoo

Well no demos makes this whole service a bit moot then.

I see a trend, Wii users won't get demos because in five minutes they'll regret their purchase with most games.

In comparison to XBLA this looks anemic. I'll continue to play my fan made games thanks...

WaterMedia

"Developers will have access to the Wii's full suite of functionality, but will be forced to use none of it."

That makes it sound like Devs have access to all functionality but will be FORCED TO NOT USE ANY OF IT.

I'd suggest rewording that to something like:

"Developers will have access to the Wii's full suite of functionality, but will not be forced to use anything specifically."

Deozaan

Comparing this to the MS XNA announcement yesterday...that tears it, I'm buying a 360.

supercrap

I'm just about done with Wii.

I second everybody who sees the entire Wii as being one step forward, two steps back.

That "Everybody's Nintendo Channel" needed to be out yesterday. If they're not going to offer demos (or harddrive space), what is the whole point of Wii Ware? It doesn't give me much of a chance to "explore" the possibilities of Wii. Instead, it'll be a service I poke around with once in awhile, trying to parse out the one good game from the bad, because you know now that this service is just going to be subject to licensed drivel. Hell, I can imagine all those awful TV "Plug-n-Play" games being ported over already.

Wake me up when the Wii goes away. It's the worst thing to happen to video games since Night Trap.

lordjoebill

Bigtime BOO on the "Bedroom Coders Need Not Apply" point. Bad move Nintendo. The Internet can be a powerful freeing force for good IF YOU LET IT. People chained to jobs will be a thing of the past... eventually.

otakucode

I used to think that demos were incredibly important. But then I thought about all the retail games I've bought, and realised that I bought the vast majority of them without having played a demo first. I based my purchasing decisions off what I knew about the game from previews and reviews, and also a healthy dosage of gut instinct.

I play the demos of the XBLA games I'm interested in, but that's mainly because they're available. Even if they weren't, I would still have bought all the XBLA games I currently own.

ArmiMaan

Boo to the "small teams from big developers" idea. Nintendo could've hit it bigtime with amateurs here.

Give me pokemon farm/ranch/whatever soonish please.

ncsbert

The rumor mill is showing Nintendo will announced HDD sometime in July.

tme2nsb

@LunarTakiro:

Ah they do have some indie developers but they still have to go through a process and present a product. It's a long application because Nintendo actually helps and they don't want to waste time or money on people who wouldn't deliver a product.

Yetanotheruninspiredscreename

@mariospants:

They licensed or rather licensed a means of using usb drives a while ago. Likely they are still cranking out security measures and countermeasures. They wouldn't want to allow usb drives without some security measures and that if you want it done right meaning years to break easily then counter the breaks quickly takes a lot of time and resources.

As for SD the wii due to it's hardware sd slot can only take up to 2 gigs. It's hardware not software or firmware issues. Just like if you want to use usb 3.0 you have to have usb 3.0 slots in your comp or devices.

Yetanotheruninspiredscreename

NOthing about this seems righ at all.

Streeks1984

No Demos?
No Indie developers?
3 titles a week only?

Final Destination.

LunarTakiro

Well, according to Joystiq, Nintendo never said there wouldn't be any demos. They said that they wouldn't REQUIRE that developers create demos. That means if a developer wants to release a demo, they can.

[www.joystiq.com]

Roto13

That "no demo" thing is pretty disappointing if it really is the policy and not just the lack of a requirement. If devs don't want to waste a lot of time on a demo, you'd think they could wrap the game in some time-limit DRM and be good to go. And space can't be an issue, because if there's no room for demos, then there's no room for the actual games! :)

I'm still really shocked that they expect us to use internal memory and SD cards for everything. I could see if they had a proprietary memory card where they were making money off the things, but that's not the case anymore. Come up with something quick Nintendo, I'm running out of space!

Gavelwrench

No demos is incredibly stupid. I hope they at least have a thing where people who bought the game can rate it, so we can kind of get a community rating feel for the game.

Mr. Fap☆Fap!

"
In a recent interview with NOA director of project development Tom Prate, he was quoted as saying, "having demos [is] ... not a requirement from Nintendo." This comment would leave one to believe that while demos are not mandatory, they will in fact be allowed.
"

So, some games may have demos. Likely the good ones.

subnet6

so they didn't announce a Wii-compatible usb hard drive? What's the point in having DLC then? Yeah I suppose you could probably put a lot of Wii DLC on a 4Gb SD card but there goes a chance to make more money on a peripheral people would actually BUY.

mariospants

@Tomsamson

I am also very disapointed to the "Bedroom developper need not to apply". As me and my friends (we are 3) are working on some games and were having hope to eventually go onboard on Wiiware, but after reading

Nintendo requirement we know they wont accept "Garage style" company which we are currently (working from our own home). XNA sadly seems to be the only solution and then it cant be commercial (from what I understand), but atleast you can show your skill and eventually probably get a deal with MS (but we dont like them).

So now let go back on our GP2X handheld console where we are free to do whatever we please ;-).

Intruder

It's frustrating that there's no demo option. Man! As long as the costs stay in the VC range (10 and under) and there are reviewsd (oh god) for the games, then that's cool. I guess. I have no choice.

pffftt.

sadkermit

ITT-PMSing hardcore gamers.

Jeez, Nintendo itself has said it's doing stuff to make this more open to devs and still you whiny mofos bitch. Bitch bitch bitch.

Foxstar Sixtail

@Moonshadow101: Heh. Yes, but on the other hand, it would obviously be stupid if they release 100 titles on day one and then nothing for the next four months.

It doesn't make sense to release more than a few titles each week, any more than say 10 and it gets a bit silly... and it certainly does make sense to have a 'buffer' of titles that means you aren't going to have weeks when people log on looking for the new stuff but there's nothing.

As for the lack of demos I don't think that's too big a deal, we don't have demos of retail games on Wii either. It will just mean relying on reviews, which should probably be good enough.

Basically it sounds great to me, I just wish it could come sooner. :)

(Oh and I agree they should figure out a way to open it to more independent/bedroom developers. The $2,000 devkit cost is fine, but they should open that up to everyone willing to sign the necessary NDA or whatever, including one-person companies and even individuals.)

quen

How hard can it be to become a licensed Nintendo developer when they hand them out to companies like Conspiracy Entertainment? I mean, come on.

BtownDesignGuy

Great. Sounds pretty lame. Can't wait.

Bernard McGraw

@Yetanotheruninspiredscreename:
what you said would if at all only apply when its about releasing retail or usual xbox live arcade games, because then you have to go through the usual certification process for a game. seems to go a bit easier with the new system now. well, we´ll see, it sounds promising though :)

tomsamson

@hahnchen: of course if a developer has previous relations to a consoler manufacturer and therefore gets easier access he will talk about that in good tones.
read up on the requirements for becoming an approved nintendo developer.
i right now run the business side things of our team as one man company, the others work for me on freelance per project basis right now. leaves everyone freedom to do other things in between when we have no project together and also makes things easier with paperwork regarding the rest of our 15 guys team is spread around the globe.
so yeah, these circumstances seem to not qualify us for wiiware dev right now (although we have a track record of creating lots of succesful casual games up to now).
well,i´ll give wiiware another go in a while and hope we get in then, for now we´ll rather work on a xna game.

tomsamson

@Fryfat:

A Ps2 and PS1 developer made Ninjabread Man. The developer has released tons of games for the PS1 and PS2 for the Euro market.

Yetanotheruninspiredscreename

@hahnchen:

Many indie guys have said that Nintendo is easier to work with in regards to the Wiiware then Xbox live.

Microsoft has tons of requirements that drive up cost substaniliay and delay the release of the game for crappy reasons.

All Nintendo wants is some assurance of quality and that there isn't any major bug issues or copyright issues/licensing issues.

Yetanotheruninspiredscreename

For those complaining about lack of space do us all a huge favor. Take a pen and piece of paper out. Right out what game saves you have for wii games and if you still own the game and are still playing the game reguarly enough. Detail how many messages, photos etc are in the wii. That takes up a lot of space and there are people with thousands of messages they have no need to keep. Delete that crap you will free several hundred blocks.

List every vc purchase, wheter you have completed it or not, how long has it been since you played and how likely it is you will play it again.

I suspect a lot of those whiners have tons of vc games uncompleted and that if they did complete them would, delete them since they wouldn't play it again.

Organize and Prioritize.

Also to the whiners Demos ruin sales especially if the demo is bad because the developer was rushed. Most game demos I have played bear no relation to the final product. Sometimes the demo made the game look far better and I didn't wait for the reviews which backed up that the game sucked. Other demos ruined sales since the demo was early or full of bugs while the actual game looked hundreds of times better and played better.

15 bucks isn't that big of deal. If you are that poverty stricken don't play games at all work on getting out of poverty. Just buy one or two well researched titles each month or couple of months. Seriously get a frigging grip you sound like a whiny hoe who needs a bitch slap to the face.

Yetanotheruninspiredscreename

@tomsamson:No, Nnooo may have had a prior relationship to Nintendo, but they've stated that WiiWare's lack of hoop jumping compared to Xbox Live Arcade made it a lot more attractive to them. Sure XNA is lowering the barrier a lot more, but that's an unknown quantity.

Medaverse Studios, was established in 2007. It has 8 people, it originally had 3, they're the guys behind Gravitronix. IGF finalists and WiiWare developers 2DBoy are a core of 2, albeit experienced developers. Your claim that you need proof of "industry big boy"-ness, or income and staff sizing is blown out of the water.

What's your definition of small upcoming indy devs? How small is small? Just you?

hahnchen

does psn have demos for original titles? just wondering

bigman88zz

My guess is that the "no demo"-policy is more related to Nintendo wanting to reduce potential costs of the service, that is, they only lose money when people download and try but don't buy.

It's pretty backwards to suggest that Nintendo wants to save the developer's time and money with such a limitation, as it is - in my experience - that a demo is vital in marketing and potentially selling lesser-known games (and a 30 sec trailer really is not enough to persuade the masses).

But then again, there is really no point in complaining about this, as Nintendo can afford to be as conservative about online play and sales as it wants, especially since it does not compete directly against, say, Xbox Live (and arguably, online is still only a secondary concern for them anyway).

Only time will tell if Nintendo really cares about the potential of its online services, but for now it would still be best to see things as they actually are: cutting extra costs and being very, very careful.

mexxxant

well,until not too long ago it was the same with all manufacturers, you´d have to get approved as developer and buy various things and all in all that wasn´t very approachable to small indies. Its just that MS is doing something to change that a good bit and Nintendo announced to do so, too at last years gdc but with this years announcment they paddled back from their original statements a lot and essentially turned it into a pretty closed thing again.
wiiware can be interesting if you have a smaller (though established for a while) stusio or are working as small team for a big studio, but yeah, for the really small upcoming indy devs its no good solution right now.

tomsamson

So when did Nintendo start using standards to judge their 3rd parties? I wish they woud've opened it up for everyone.

holycaribou

@hahnchen:
sorry, but that´s nonsense.
first of all the guys currently making wiiware games are either longtime retail console game dev studios or have good relations to such and got approved as wiiware developers that way. As the interview points out you have to get approved as Nintendo developer to make wiiware games (which you can only if you proove worthy as an industry big boy or as a registered company with enough income and staff size to match their requests) and yeah, you have to buy dev kits. those may be much cheaper than dev kits for xbox 360 or ps3, on the other side when developing games for 360 using xna you don´t need a dev kit at all. you just download xna gs/vs,get a 99$ subscription and can then test your games on your retail 360.
so yeah, wiiware looks pretty shofdy for real small indies compared to xna.

tomsamson

@Yin: The hour time limit is one off. As soon as you finish your play time, you have to buy the thing to continue. PopCap do a similar idea for their Steam demoes.

hahnchen

Bedroom coders need not apply - I disagree with that. Nnooo studios, the guys bringing us Pop aren't exactly big hitters, although they do have some extensive experience at other firms. Indeed, your own article - [kotaku.com], points this out. Medaverse isn't a big company either, it seems that Gravitronix is one of their first efforts at game development.

WiiWare is a lot easier to get on board in comparison to the 360 and PSN (although I'm unsure of how much XNA will lower their barriers to entry). No demos are needed, and getting a dev kit is a lot cheaper and easier.

hahnchen

@Yin:

It depends on the game. Many games take an hour or two to get the hang of. I suppose others could be finished in that time.

Of course, I was referring to a time-limit before the game is totally deactivated, not a per-play time-limit.

Marlor

I thought it was just that Nintendo wasn't enforcing demos. If a company wanted to release one they could...?

MrLister

I think Nintendo will pull a rabbit out of a hat with this one. We can only still speculate at this point how the whole thing is going to work, but VC already is a huge success with so many million downloads. I can see it being the same with Wiiware regardless if stuff similar to XBL Arcade is produced.

jpxdude

If it's not easy or cheap to become a professional Wii developer, who the hell made Ninjabread Man?

Fryfat

@Marlor: An hour or two?! Since when are timed demos longer than like 5-15 minutes? An hour or two sounds like a lot of people might be content with just playing the demo.

About storing things on SD cards... Yeah, it's tied to the Wii but that would be hacked within days if you could access the data with your computer. Maybe if they changed something in the Wii itself... Like the data on the card needed to be tied to the Wii-number AND the Wii itself needed to have some variable set to "this game has been bought, so you are allowed to use it from your SD card"

Yin

Actually, many sources are saying that demos, while not required, can still be produced by developers.

miniboss1232

@Marlor:
Piracy is inevitable, sure, but noone's managed to crack the security on Virtual Console yet, and that's likely the same security on WiiWare Channels.

BPM IIDX 8th style

@dowingba:
Hard disk drives are A LOT cheaper than flash memory (i.e. solid state drives, SD cards, Memory Sticks, etc.). Yes, for platter-based drives, the price per gig is less than a dollar, but flash is not that cheap.

BPM IIDX 8th style

If they didn't want to burden developers with the cost of making demos, then why not just make time-limited demos possible. Make the game playable for an hour or two, then it is locked. If you want to keep playing, then you buy it, otherwise it disappears from your Wii after a few days.

Sure, pirates would probably find a way to hack the demos to unlock them... but piracy is inevitable. We're going to see something like "[WII] 50 WiiWare Games Fully Playable [NTSC][PIRATETURDS.com] rar.torrent" showing up on Torrent sites soon anyway.

Marlor

to thejakeman in reply to this you said:
"@tomsamson: you're on a team? really? how many games have you published? none? thats the XNA model for you."

I´ve worked on many games up to now, you can see some of them here:
[www.stimunationgames.com]
Yes, they are flash games and several of them are advertising games for clients (cause yeah,we have to earn money for living), but yeah, i´ve finished several games by now. So yeah, i´m one of those smaller indy developers who´d like to jump from web game dev to console game dev. One thing you´re right about with in your remark: Yes, obviously then Xna is for people like me and Wiiware is not (though that´s what i moaned about in first place anyway).

"seriously, independant developers won't be touched unless they can prove their profitability. that's the way it's always worked and always will work. at least nintendo has the sensitivity not to give anyone any false hope."

Yes, that´s the way it always worked on consoles (besides the small yarouze experiment by sony in the past), but yeah, i don´t agree that´s the way it´ll always work in the future, too.
First as the announcment by MS showd(and its not just an announcment, you can download demos of the first few games already) they´re opening up to allowing small indies getting in,so i wouldn´t call this giving false hope.
Besides that i also think the console developers HAVE to open up like this,just because of the nature of the beast which is how games are created and enjoyed by the masses today. The console world is touting the Wii as the casual gamer machine which attracts non gamers.
Nice.
Though for a reality check: the casual game platform is the internet and there the most used technology is flash. There are lots of millions more pople playing casual games on the web than on consoles.

People only talking about retail game sales say the pc game market is getting smaller, that is totally off reality.
In reality the pc gaming market is exploding, its just that its not about tracked by npd retail games but instead about online games which are played more often and by more people than all console games together.
Beeing able to create games with flash and other technologies and have em readily available for the masses once they are uploaded has and will change a lot in the gaming world and the console manufacturers do good in realizing that and trying to get some of those indy developers as developers on their systems instead of having all of them as contenders.
In my eyes the closed nature of console dev will become a thing of the past not that far in the future.

tomsamson

@BPM IIDX