So just recently I read an article on Gamasutra talking to a developer who ported a title to Wii. The developer was enraged by Nintendo's treatment of the studio and stated his studio was done working with Nintendo. His main complaints were to do with Nintendo's strict quality controls. His two big ones were

The 6,000 copy rule. According to this developer and echoed by a few others. Nintendo has a minimum sale policy of 6,000 copies. If your game does not sell over 6,000 copies you do not receive a cheque. Now this may seem unfair I mean if you sell ten copies you deserve a cheque right? Well assuming this policy is true I am actually very proud of Nintendo. During the great games crash the industry collapsed because their were too many games, no quality controls to speak of. Consumers simply stopped buying garbage and so much garbage mentioned tons of great games bombed. The games crash brought about the demise of several gaming giants. Today on XBLA we hear of this same problem. I read a while back on Gamasutra an article about a highly rated Indie title one that had a 9/10 review. Yet the title didn't break the thousand mark in over a month. I've read several articles about iOS developers who aren't making a penny on iOS either, their is simply to much garbage I open my Android Store and see that exact same problem 1,000 games but what 50 are worth buying even at 4.99$. By having this policy Nintendo guarantees a developer will produce the absolute best product possible. The developers title will not clog up the store. If the developer releases say three games and none of them pass the 6,000 mark then they will drop Nintendo meaning less competition for the other quality games. This is a great way of weeding out lower quality software. As a developer you won't support Nintendo unless you are 100% positive your title will break the 6,000 mark. Obviously judging by the amount of games still coming to eShop that obviously some developers are still finding sales. I heard Rolling Western broke 100k that would prove that a quality title will sell and Nintendo is simply ensuring that the quality titles aren't choked off by the shovel ware.

The second big problem he had was the approval process. Every time the developer changed a main game play mechanic or made a major change to a level. They had to submit the level to Nintendo for quality control. Nintendo had paid gamers and staff who would play the content and then tell the studio if the content met Nintendo's standards. From what I have heard Nintendo does not take any creative freedoms away but does critiscize anything that simply isn't up to Nintendo's basic standards. The developer himself said Nintendo's constant pushing led to an improved product though he argued that they would have made just as good a product without Nintendo pushing them wish simply is not true or they wouldn't have been pushed by Nintendo in the first place.

With 3DS and WiiU I am absolutely glad to hear that Nintendo is cracking down hard to ensure a high standard of quality is implemented.implemented. I hope that Nintendo begins to apply these strict controls to the actual physical formats as well. The Wii was a disaster Nintendo took anything they could get. All those shovel ware games hurt Nintendo's first party games as well as higher quality third party titles. The shovel ware was horrible for Wii. I am actually impressed by these strict quality controls and really hope they are adopted across the boards

What's your thoughts on the current quality controls on eShop? What about on disk? Are their too many controls is it bad for the Nintendo platforms? Or is this a good thing and it will help software and hardware sales in the future? What's your take?

@Spurgeonryan
Took the words right out of my mouth.
@JoelCool7
I assume wiiware titles would be part of the nintendo eshop? Or is that the name of just the 3ds shop? If yes to the first question, I would argue their strategy is not strict enough or ineffective.

The problem I see is that the game was actually good. Forcing developers to release games with mainstream appeal to ensure sales doesn't equal a quality boost.

The only problem I see is that the 6000 sales in order to get profit is to high for small time software. Should be closer to 2000 or 2500. Especially for the eShop which even some of the best stuff not attached to major franchises struggles to meet up to 6000 in under a year.

Nintendo has to keep that threshold otherwise the eshop and the future wiiU shop are going to be full of shovelware, tons of bad games making almost impossible for someone to go and find the good games. If they didnt reach 6000 they should be doing something bad, I mean, mutand mudds, zen pinball, mighty switch force to name a few are all successful games.

No. I mean, look at the number of quality titles on the eShop compared to WiiWare, for example...

I've always personally thought that the 42mb limit is more restrictive myself for Wiiware, and that doesn't apply to the eshop (I think I remember reading somewhere that the 3DS limit is 2gb).

Games like Super Meat Boy and Bit Trip Runner 2 did not come to WiiWare because of the size limit. Equally, I believe that the Wii missed out on a Wiiware version of Sonic CD as it would be larger than 42mb.

MrT-Tar said: I've always personally thought that the 42mb limit is more restrictive myself for Wiiware, and that doesn't apply to the eshop (I think I remember reading somewhere that the 3DS limit is 2gb). Games like Super Meat Boy and Bit Trip Runner 2 did not come to WiiWare because of the size limit. Equally, I believe that the Wii missed out on a Wiiware version of Sonic CD as it would be larger than 42mb.

Yes the 42-MB limit was asinine and it was a failure on Nintendo's part. Nintendo did not give the Wii adequate internal memory. If Nintendo had put in a 120-gig hard drive their would have been no need for a limit. But memory was expensive and Nintendo couldn't include that on the hardware. So Nintendo limited WiiWare titles to 42-MB so that any Wii owner could download the game.

Personally I used up the Wii's entire internal memory ages ago with that limited size. The lack of an external hard drive or an alternative memory unit simply made the WiiWare limited. With WiiU I expect a 120-gig hard drive now it might be a flash drive it could be all kinds of memory. But a 120-gig is likely the ideal amount of memory. The lowest amount I think possible is 60-gig. But in both cases Nintendo will need to make the hard drive upgradeable.external memory devices and such will be necessary for Nintendo to achieve their goals!

It would be cool if say there was like a review screen or something when you're looking for a good game to purchase on the e-shop, xbla, psn, w.e store thing. That way you can search for games that are 9/10, something like that.