Iwata talks a bit about Wii Street U and services
Nintendo’s next-big thing for Wii U is Wii Street U. The upcoming app, now set for a mid-February launch, will allow users to take advantage of the GamePad to tour areas straight throughtheir living room.
President Satoru Iwata believes services such as Wii Street U “will help people widely understand the unique value of Wii U and increase the number of people who are interested in Wii U in a family and eventually lead to a bright future of this console.”
Wii Street U as well as other functionality like Miiverse and Nintendo TVii are primarily built on HTML5 and web technologies. As a result, Nintendo has “been able to deploy various services for this console with less in-house development resources in a more timely manner than our previous platforms.”
Iwata has also said that, in GDC in March, Nintendo “will show you some of our efforts to expand the range of software developers.” Talk about Wii Street U’s development environment (and “some VOD services”) can be expected.
As you can see, through this application, Wii U enables you to experience linking your living room to various places in the world.
Needless to say, the primary use of Wii U is to enjoy video games. We believe that, however, these kinds of services will help people widely understand the unique value of Wii U and increase the number of people who are interested in Wii U in a family and eventually lead to a bright future of this console.
By the way, this service has been developed by a small team mostly using web technologies based on HTML5, not the so-called native codes only for Wii U applications. Both Miiverse and Nintendo TVii have been created as web applications utilizing browsing engines. The Wii U console is powerful enough to smoothly run such applications as developed in this way without writing any specific programs. We have been able to deploy various services for this console with less in-house development resources in a more timely manner than our previous platforms.
Now is the time the development of video games for dedicated platforms requires a vast investment. Thinking of diversion of web services, creation of prototypes and development of independent label games, it has become more important to expand the range of software developers. At GDC (Game Developers Conference) to be held in March, we will show you some of our efforts to expand the range of software developers. They will include the development environment used for “Wii Street U” and some VOD services, where you can develop the Wii U software using web technologies like HTML5 and JavaScript and Unity, a cross-platform video game engine used by many users.
