Nintendo breaking down developer barriers on Wii U

Nintendo platforms are more accessible to indie developers than ever, says the company’s business development manager.

Speaking to Joystiq, Dan Adelman admitted Nintendo had a reputation for being difficult to approach in the past, but it was now putting in more effort to make the firm easier for indies to approach.

One way the it is trying to attract developers to release games on its hardware is through the Web Framework, a HTML5 development platform devs can use to code for Wii U.

Nintendo has also removed the necessity to become an authorised developer on its platforms, and wants titles from all kinds of game creators.

"Historically, Nintendo has seemed kind of hard to approach, kind of like there’s a closed system where if a developer already knows somebody at Nintendo or has some kind of ‘in,’ they’re in, but otherwise there’s no way to interface with the company," said Adelman.

"I think we’re putting a lot of effort into changing that and making ourselves more accessible, so I really want to make sure that people realise that it’s actually pretty easy now – and we’re trying to make it easier – to work with us and release games on our systems."

Adelman also tried to allay concerns on potential discoverability issues for the Wii U’s digital marketplace as the number of titles grows, and said that as more indie games are published on the store Nintendo would increasingly make them more visible on the homepage, updating the eShop on a weekly basis.

“Right now it’s still in the early stages, particularly for Wii U," he said.

"I think 3DS is a much more mature platform in terms of the volume of games. There’s still a relatively small number of indie games that are on the Shop, but we’ve got a whole bunch more coming this holiday. It takes that much time for games to go through the pipeline and finish development and release, so I think we’ll see a lot more content coming through."

For more information on Nintendo’s Web Framework, you can also read our recent interview with the company on the matter here.