Two Tribes’ Toki Tori 2 will be released this year as a downloadable title from Steam and the Wii U eShop. Two Tribes co-founder Collin van Ginkel says that Toki Tori 2 is being developed for Nintendo’s new system because of three reasons: the brand-new Wii U GamePad, the console’s powerful hardware, and the supposition that Nintendo is committed to its online strategy with the Wii U.

Moving onto Wii U specifically, can you share why you chose to release this on Nintendo’s new system?

“A new controller, more powerful hardware and a Nintendo that seems truly committed to their online strategy. What more could we wish for!”

Are we correct in assuming that this is a download title? If so, what are your impressions so far, if any, of the eShop setup on Wii U?

“It will most definitely be a downloadable title. We haven’t released a boxed game since 2008 and don’t plan on doing that anytime soon. As for the shop, I commend Nintendo for moving forward with new features such as full downloads of retail titles, which bodes well for the future.”

 

http://mynintendonews.com/2012/08/17/nintendo-truly-committed-to-their-online-strategy-with-wii-u/

I could be wrong but I would imagine that Nintendo would only charge a modest royalty when a game is sold digitally, and therefore the publisher/developer pockets more money per game sale. Beyond that, the elimination of used game sales probably provides a modest boost to game sales.

If Nintendo was being very smart they would have a tiered licensing and royalty structure so that a developer earned as much selling a game for $30 digitally as they would selling it for $60 at retail; resulting in smaller studios being able to release budget priced games and still seeing healthy sales. After all, a short game like Mad World probably would have seen higher sales at $20, and if the developer still pocketed $12 or $15 they would have earned more money.

They better be.