Nintendo not interested in WiiWare, Mario DS 2 coming?
MTV’s video game division recently conducted an interview with the President of Nintendo of America, Reginald Fils-Aime, in which he not only basically completely dodged a question about New Super Mario Bros. 2 on DS, but kind of implied Nintendo has no direct interest in WiiWare.
Many have been eagerly awaiting the onslaught of Nintendo-developed games on the still relatively new download service for brand new games, WiiWare. However, there have been no internally developed titles so far, with the nearest being the likes of Actionloop, Dr. Mario and Pokémon Ranch, all of which were developed by either outside parties or Second Party teams. Those wondering where the true Nintendo games are might have the answer now, and certainly not the one they were hoping for, if Reggie Fils-Aime’s recent words are anything to go by.
The general synopsis of the interview is that Nintendo is holding back on pouring lots of content onto the download service in order to let smaller Third Party developers to take control and gain a chance that they may never have had previously if they were forced to create games from the ground-up and put through the usual retail process. The actual video interview can be seen below, whilst some key highlights are paraphrased below that as those outside of the US may not be able to access the video interview:
Reggie Fils-Aim talks with MTV about the WiiWare system
MTV Multiplayer: [laughing] Well, you’ve got to get it in the development kits. What about WiiWare? It wasn’t talked about at all. What’s the story there?
Reginald Fils-Aime, Nintendo of America President: WiiWare continues. Every week we have new WiiWare titles coming and that’s going to continue to be the progression for quite some time. We really wanted to focus this E3 on packaged product and product that was happening in the marketplace this holiday season, so that is why WiiWare wasn’t discussed.
MTV Multiplayer: There are going to be a lot more WiiWare games, right?
Reginald Fils-Aime, Nintendo of America President: Absolutely. Every Monday.
MTV Multiplayer: To what extent should people be expecting there to be first-party content coming out in the rest of the year. Or is this going to continue to be primarily a third-party service?
Reginald Fils-Aime, Nintendo of America President: When we developed WiiWare our focus, as we discussed, was on smaller developers, brand new content, different types of content. Will we put out the occasional first-party WiiWare? Absolutely. But it’s predominantly meant to be much more exploratory, experimental and for these brand new third-party developers.
MTV Multiplayer also quizzed Reggie about where “New Super Mario Bros. 2” was, since many people were looking for it back at the E3 event. Sadly Reggie easily dodged the question by stating “It’s in Mr. Miyamoto’s brain.”
Do you feel that Nintendo should actively support the WiiWare service in a stronger fashion? And should Miyamoto-san be getting New Super Mario Bros. 2 onto the Nintendo DS as soon as possible? As ever, be sure to share your thoughts on the matters at hand by posting below…
When i read the heading, I thought Nintendo was considering dropping the WiiWare service. But Reggie simply stated that the main focus of WiiWare right now is on small third-party developers. That is a good thing, right? It gives them a chance to release games on a cheap downloadable service similar to how Xbox Live Arcade is.
I find it strange how Nintendo is distancing itself from the service, though. Surely it should give it more of a push to start with, at least, in order to get people more interested in it…that way it would give smaller Third Parties a wider audience to aim at.
No, it’s not what you understood. What he meant is that instead of making competition for WiiWare titles where it would be Nintendo vs. third party, he’s stating that they will back off so that third parties can have a bigger piece of the pie and in the future be able to develop greater games. It’s a win-win situation, really…