More than 20 indie games expected for Wii U this year

Nintendo has been quiet about its plans for indie developers, but expects to see a growth of about 20-30 indie titles on the Wii U before the holiday season.

Ozzie Mejia

August 2, 2013 9:30 AM

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Nintendo may be quieter than its competitors regarding indie development. However, Nintendo's business development manager, Dan Adelman, notes that Nintendo is actively seeking indie talent for its platforms. In fact, he expects to see 20 to 30 indie titles pop up on the Wii U before the holiday season.

Adelman tells Joystiq that the influx in indie titles can be credited to Nintendo relaxing many of the rules for becoming an Authorized Developer. "Our guiding philosophy is that if you're able to make games on Nintendo platforms, we want to help make sure that you can do that on our systems," he said. "Our primary consideration is an ability to make a game. You don't have to have a record of published titles, or have to have worked at a large company in the past. If you're actively working on a game, that should be sufficient."

Once indie titles begin populating the eShop in greater numbers, expect them to also be featured prominently on its front page. "As more and more content comes in, I'm expecting that's just going to take up a larger share of the available real estate on the screen," Adelman added.

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?