“You know, it’s crazy that there are so many developers who don’t realize this, but yes, it is not only possible for an indie to get a game onto the eShop service, we’ve tried to make it as frictionless as possible,” says Nintendo’s business development manager Dan Adelman in an interview with Gamasutra.
Indies looking to get their work onto the Nintendo eShop on the 3DS or Wii U do need to be licensed Nintendo developers, but becoming one is a fairly straightforward process, Adelman says. Nintendo have revised a few policies that made the process a lot simpler than it used to be in the WiiWare days.
“We really have only a few requirements to sign up as a licensed developer with Nintendo,” Adelman shares. “The most notable ones are that you have to have some experience making games, you have to be able to keep any confidential materials like dev kits secure and you have to form a company. None of these should be prohibitive to any indie developer.”
The most prominent restriction that has been removed is the requirement for a developer to have their own office space, separate from their home. Additionally, anyone from any country can make their games available on the Nintendo eShop in any territories outside of Japan without the need for an address in that territory.
“As you point out, more and more people are working from home, and we recognize that developers are forming virtual teams around the world,” Adelman admits. “I know we’ve shied away from talking about these things publicly in the past, so I’m glad that I can officially confirm that the office requirement is a thing of the past.”
A Nintendo development kit costs about the same as a high-end PC, Adelman reveals. Additionally, Nintendo are providing the Unity Pro 4 engine to licensed Wii U developers at no added cost. At GDC, the company will discuss its plans to enable easier development using technologies like HTML5 and Javascript for Wii U.
Additionally, Adelman says, Nintendo are soliciting feedback from developers on how to make their development tools better, how to make their processes easier, and so on. They also try to get every developer’s questions addressed as soon as possible. “We have an internal goal of getting every question a response within 24 hours,” shares Adelman. “And if we can’t get an answer in 24 hours, we at least will let them know when we expect to be able to get them what they need.”
Published: Mar 25, 2013 10:30 am