Nintendo bars self-publishing from Japanese indie devs

Nintendo is making a push to bring in more U.S. and European indie devs for their platforms, but look to be excluding Japanese indies.

Ozzie Mejia

July 24, 2013 1:30 PM

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Nintendo has been making a sincere push to court indie developers in the United States and Europe, granting them a free Unity license and permission to self-publish their games for the Wii U. However, Nintendo appears to be going in the other direction for indie developers residing in their home country of Japan.

Nintendo is currently disallowing self-publishing from indie developers based in Japan. The company confirmed to CVG that "the policy in question is the decision of Nintendo's department responsible for licensing activities in each region, and the licensing department of Nintendo is currently not accepting subject applications from individuals in Japan."

The decision is curious, given the increasing presence of indie titles on Nintendo's platforms. Mighty Switch Force 2 recently hit the 3DS eShop, while the Wii U is expected to receive Shovel Knight, Tengami, and Cloudberry Kingdom in the future. None of these games are from Japan.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?