20-30 new indie games expected on Wii U by the holidays; Adelman talks indies, Wii U install base, competition
Joystiq caught up with Dan Adelman, who you’ve likely heard about before. His official title is business development manager at Nintendo of America, but gamers should know him as the main man behind the company’s indie efforts.
In the new interview, Adelman spoke about indie content on Wii U, as well as the console’s install base and competition. Head past the break for a roundup of his responses.
On how Nintendo is more approachable and accessible than in the past…
“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. 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 realize 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.”
On Nintendo’s more lax policies on allowing devs to work on their systems…
“Our guiding philosophy is that if you’re able to make games on Nintendo platforms, we want to help make sure that you can do that on our systems. Our primary consideration is an ability to make a game. You don’t have to have a record of published titles, or have to have worked at a large company in the past. If you’re actively working on a game, that should be sufficient.”
On promoting indie games on the eShop’s main page…
“As more and more content comes in, I’m expecting that’s just going to take up a larger share of the available real estate on the screen.”
On the expectation that 20-30 new indie games will coming to Wii U by the holidays, assuming development goes well…
“Right now it’s still in the early stages, particularly for Wii U. 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.”
On wanting a larger install base…
“I think we’d all like to see our install base grow a little bit faster, and I think we’ll see that when our holiday lineup comes up. I think a lot of developers are waiting on that. But so far, among the existing install base, purchases are pretty healthy and demand is pretty healthy, in that install base community.”
On not worrying about other consoles…
“We often don’t compare ourselves to other consoles. We have a history of doing our own thing, for better or for worse. We’ve had quite a bit of success not necessarily following the competition – for example, last generation with Wii, everyone was thinking it’s all about graphics horsepower and CPU horsepower and high-end graphics and shaders, and I think the Wii successfully demonstrated that no, it’s really all about gameplay and what kinds of new types of gameplay can you create, what new experiences can you create. Beauty fades.”
