this got blown way outta proportion

World of Goo was imagined by two ex-Electronic Arts developers, Kyle Gabler and Ron Carmel. Their game studio, 2D Boy, was essentially based out of whatever Wi-Fi enabled coffee shop they could find. The developers estimate spending about $10,000 of their personal savings to develop World of Goo which includes rent, food, and minimal equipment. The two developers attribute the game's success to their blog and early web presence, as well as the awards it won at the Independent Games Festival at the Game Developers Conference in 2007, causing publishers who did not respond to their requests now wanting to publish the title.

From wikipedia

that's actually a pretty good deal for developers,...i think. ah hell, what do i know.

World of Goo costs 1500 Nintendo Points.. This adds up to $US15.. 2Dboy would therefore get $US9.75 for each sale..

This means for World of Goo to break even solely from WiiWare, it would have had to sell 1026 copies..


That's freaking fantastic!

Actually it would have to sell 6000 copies according to the rules in the OP, right?

Then they'd get $58,500 or a profit of $48,500... It's not possible to break even with that budget and rules.

So this is what all the fuss was about? And once you meet that goal you collect all the hitherto-withheld money anyways? Geez. Luckily, almost no one actually blew this out of proportion.

Two thoughts.

First of all, it is amazing how when the facts are known that this looks like a reasonable policy to avoid a flood of shovelware on the download service.

Second of all, I love how Kotaku still took a shot at Nintendo. Shows what it thinks (it either hates the Big N or hates everyone). Cut-offs are by definition going to be somewhat arbitrary. Size is about the best because to use as a proxy that I can think of because it should say something about effort. (It also helps prevent bloatware -- have more efficient code, have less of a threashold to being paid).

Mike from Morgantown

If you have to be mr. perfect, yes.. :P

wasn't whole world of goo budget 110k? i mean not those 10k used as "development costs", but whole project budget(PR, advertising, stands, travel expenses and so on).

Yea, World of Goo was $110k in total to make.

But 2D boy has made about a million off of it, so we don't have to worry about them.

Aren't most WiiWare games $7-$15?