It seems that Nintendo is currently unable to meet the demand concerning their low-cost development kits. Larger and established developers are getting the bulk of the newest versions of developments, leaving indie game makers in the dark. The Independent Developer Program has been put on hold for now, it seems. Water Cooler Games’ Ian Bogost recently posted about the situation at his blog.
According to our contact, the Wii Independent Developer Program is “on hold” until the end of the month, because “the Wii publishers are taking all of the available inventory, and more.” In other words, Nintendo doesn’t have enough kits to cover the demand for all those crappy licensed games, let alone more original work. I’ve confirmed that others heard the same story at D.I.C.E. last week.
The dev kit situation mirrors the Wii itself. Last November I also lamented about the absurd fanboy commitment required to obtain a Wii, and I wondered how Nintendo could claim to appeal to ordinary people if nobody could get a device. Today, three months later, it’s still almost impossible to get a Wii — or a DS for that matter, the two game consoles most likely to appeal to the so-called “non-gamer.”
I still have a lot of interest in developing for Wii at the studio, but the lack of dev kits combined with the lack of retail units makes me worry. Is Nintendo’s story about mass-appeal just marketing rhetoric? At the rate we’re going, independent games of any kind won’t be a reality until 2008 at least, and we still don’t know how likely Nintendo is to license unusual games for the system. Maybe by that time the retail stock situation will have resolved itself, at least. There’s no point making games for a machine nobody can buy.
With Microsoft and Sony already backing the independent game market, it’s starting to seem like Nintendo is the company not supporting potential developers for the system once again, even if the problem of producing development kits isn’t entirely their fault.
