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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Nintendo giving Devs free Wii U kits?

VGKing on 05 April 2013
MDMAlliance said:
VGKing said:
Blacksaber said:
VGKing said:
ethomaz said:
VGKing said:
I don't think price of Wii U devkits is the issue here....but its a start. Good job Nintendo!

I think for Indie and small developers it is a huge issue.

The devkits cost over $20k.

Well if indies are getting free devkits then it is a huge plus. But indie developers generally  have a small staff and limited resources so if given the option to make a PS4 game or a Wii U game, which will they choose?

They choose PC and then do a console release 6 months to a year later.

The install base of next-gen consoles will get so big it wil be hard to ignore like that.

There's no guarantee that the install base will actually get as big as what I think you're saying it will.  Some people predict that this gen will not do as well as last gen had done.

How big did I say it will get?



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dahuman on 05 April 2013
VGKing said:
ethomaz said:
VGKing said:
I don't think price of Wii U devkits is the issue here....but its a start. Good job Nintendo!

I think for Indie and small developers it is a huge issue.

The devkits cost over $20k.

Well if indies are getting free devkits then it is a huge plus. But indie developers generally  have a small staff and limited resources so if given the option to make a PS4 game or a Wii U game, which will they choose?

If the games are Unity based then they'd just release it on everything assuming they also have Unity licensed for their dev PCs.



dahuman on 05 April 2013

Hopefully there will be enough out there where somebody will eventually leak actual specs and Wii U hardware abilities or benchmarks, I'm so tired of people guessing it, facts wanted!



MDMAlliance on 05 April 2013
VGKing said:
MDMAlliance said:
VGKing said:
Blacksaber said:
VGKing said:
ethomaz said:
VGKing said:
I don't think price of Wii U devkits is the issue here....but its a start. Good job Nintendo!

I think for Indie and small developers it is a huge issue.

The devkits cost over $20k.

Well if indies are getting free devkits then it is a huge plus. But indie developers generally  have a small staff and limited resources so if given the option to make a PS4 game or a Wii U game, which will they choose?

They choose PC and then do a console release 6 months to a year later.

The install base of next-gen consoles will get so big it wil be hard to ignore like that.

There's no guarantee that the install base will actually get as big as what I think you're saying it will.  Some people predict that this gen will not do as well as last gen had done.

How big did I say it will get?


You didn't, but if you can say that for next-gen then what about what happened with this gen?  Yeah, some consoles did get indie games but it isn't like too many indie developers actually prefer to develop for them.  In fact, a lot of indie developers have distaste towards consoles many times.  PC install base is also really big. So what would "so big" have to be in order for indie developers to really care that much?



VGKing on 05 April 2013
MDMAlliance said:
VGKing said:
MDMAlliance said:
VGKing said:
Blacksaber said:
VGKing said:
ethomaz said:
VGKing said:
I don't think price of Wii U devkits is the issue here....but its a start. Good job Nintendo!

I think for Indie and small developers it is a huge issue.

The devkits cost over $20k.

Well if indies are getting free devkits then it is a huge plus. But indie developers generally  have a small staff and limited resources so if given the option to make a PS4 game or a Wii U game, which will they choose?

They choose PC and then do a console release 6 months to a year later.

The install base of next-gen consoles will get so big it wil be hard to ignore like that.

There's no guarantee that the install base will actually get as big as what I think you're saying it will.  Some people predict that this gen will not do as well as last gen had done.

How big did I say it will get?


You didn't, but if you can say that for next-gen then what about what happened with this gen?  Yeah, some consoles did get indie games but it isn't like too many indie developers actually prefer to develop for them.  In fact, a lot of indie developers have distaste towards consoles many times.  PC install base is also really big. So what would "so big" have to be in order for indie developers to really care that much?

PS4 will be incredibly developer friendly. Did you not pay attention to how much indie support Sony was getting at GDC?
I expect PS4 to sell comparably to PS3. it will have a large install base that won't make sense for any developers to ignore. Big or small.



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KHlover on 05 April 2013

That's certainly a good move by Nintendo. Both Nintendo and Sony do their best to get the indies on their side, it will be very interesting to see the results. As gamers, we can only profit by this competition :D



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MDMAlliance on 05 April 2013
VGKing said:
MDMAlliance said:
VGKing said:
MDMAlliance said:
VGKing said:
Blacksaber said:
VGKing said:
ethomaz said:
VGKing said:
I don't think price of Wii U devkits is the issue here....but its a start. Good job Nintendo!

I think for Indie and small developers it is a huge issue.

The devkits cost over $20k.

Well if indies are getting free devkits then it is a huge plus. But indie developers generally  have a small staff and limited resources so if given the option to make a PS4 game or a Wii U game, which will they choose?

They choose PC and then do a console release 6 months to a year later.

The install base of next-gen consoles will get so big it wil be hard to ignore like that.

There's no guarantee that the install base will actually get as big as what I think you're saying it will.  Some people predict that this gen will not do as well as last gen had done.

How big did I say it will get?


You didn't, but if you can say that for next-gen then what about what happened with this gen?  Yeah, some consoles did get indie games but it isn't like too many indie developers actually prefer to develop for them.  In fact, a lot of indie developers have distaste towards consoles many times.  PC install base is also really big. So what would "so big" have to be in order for indie developers to really care that much?

PS4 will be incredibly developer friendly. Did you not pay attention to how much indie support Sony was getting at GDC?
I expect PS4 to sell comparably to PS3. it will have a large install base that won't make sense for any developers to ignore. Big or small.


I thought that was besides the point?  I wasn't saying next gen wont have many indie developers. 

I thought what you were saying was that indie developers are going after the install base.



Chark on 05 April 2013
ethomaz said:

Sony did the same with Vita...

Did they? I thought the 2k dev kit price tag was enough?



Before the PS3 everyone was nice to me :(

VGKing on 05 April 2013
MDMAlliance said:
VGKing said:
MDMAlliance said:
VGKing said:
MDMAlliance said:
VGKing said:
Blacksaber said:
VGKing said:
ethomaz said:
VGKing said:
I don't think price of Wii U devkits is the issue here....but its a start. Good job Nintendo!

I think for Indie and small developers it is a huge issue.

The devkits cost over $20k.

Well if indies are getting free devkits then it is a huge plus. But indie developers generally  have a small staff and limited resources so if given the option to make a PS4 game or a Wii U game, which will they choose?

They choose PC and then do a console release 6 months to a year later.

The install base of next-gen consoles will get so big it wil be hard to ignore like that.

There's no guarantee that the install base will actually get as big as what I think you're saying it will.  Some people predict that this gen will not do as well as last gen had done.

How big did I say it will get?


You didn't, but if you can say that for next-gen then what about what happened with this gen?  Yeah, some consoles did get indie games but it isn't like too many indie developers actually prefer to develop for them.  In fact, a lot of indie developers have distaste towards consoles many times.  PC install base is also really big. So what would "so big" have to be in order for indie developers to really care that much?

PS4 will be incredibly developer friendly. Did you not pay attention to how much indie support Sony was getting at GDC?
I expect PS4 to sell comparably to PS3. it will have a large install base that won't make sense for any developers to ignore. Big or small.


I thought that was besides the point?  I wasn't saying next gen wont have many indie developers. 

I thought what you were saying was that indie developers are going after the install base.

Well, they are. They're going after the console that will have a large install base and the demographics to support their game.

The bigger the install base, the more your game will sell on that platform.



ethomaz on 05 April 2013
Chark said:
ethomaz said:

Sony did the same with Vita...

Did they? I thought the 2k dev kit price tag was enough?

Some months ago Sony give some free Vita DevKits for developers...