Confused by Nintendo’s WiiWare strategy, meant to empower the independent game development scene? You’re not alone. Microsoft’s Chris Satchell feels much the same way, feeling that it’s failing to “empower the gaming community.”
“I’ve been a little confused by WiiWare,” he said. “The more I look at it, the more I’m confused, because it sort of doesn’t really look like something for independents. At best it’s what we would call a registered developer programme.”
“It’s really a way for you to get hold of dev kits and the normal development environment when you’re not signed to a big publisher,” he added. “Which is very different than what we’re doing with XNA, which is you can just go and download the tools and we’re going to give you a distribution (platform) and the community will manage it.”
“We’re going to completely enable you, versus ‘well, if you kind of work with us we can possibly kind of, back door or grandfather you into some kind of developer programme which is a lot like our professional developer programme’.”
“So, I’m not actually convinced it’s really going to empower the community a whole bunch.”
However, he doesn’t believe Nintendo doesn’t want to empower smaller developers: “I think probably they do want to enable independent developers. I don’t know how much they’re succeeding with that, and I don’t know if it’s going to be the seachange that I’m hoping we’ll see with XNA of really empowering the community.”
