Nintendo Not Promoting WiiWare Enough, Says ex-GoldenEye Dev

Martin Hollis, one of the devs behind classic N64 shooter GoldenEye and now running indie studio Zoonami, has said that Nintendo is not using much of its marketing budget to promote WiiWare – Nintendo’s equivalent of XBLA.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Hollis said that Apple has “sucked all the air out” of the market and “have had such massive success in capturing media attention”. For Wiiware and DSiware, Hollis doesn’t know “that Nintendo’s putting a great deal of energy into trying to generate PR for WiiWare or DSiware”.

“Our experience was extremely positive, but our title was a second-party title and it did have some TV advertising with a spot inside a larger advert for Wii. We assume that has to have an impact”, said Hollis. He noted that whether or not developers make a sequel on the platform is “generally the best indicator of someone finding that their product was profitable” as well as saying that “opportunities are there for people, you have to make a game that fits in with Nintendo – has a Nintendo feeling”.

When asked whether Nintendo could be not supporting WiiWare in order to keep traditional boxed retailers happy, Hollis speculatively agreed: “I haven’t seen any evidence of that, but that has to be true, surely? It has to be true that they’re making so much money at retail, and helping their partners make money at retail, there has to be some kind of organisational inertia there”.

It’s an interesting discussion mainly due to the fact that Nintendo is known for not supporting, either through marketing or other means, third-party development on the Wii.

Earlier in the year, Nintendo’s Reggie Fil-Aime spoke about how the company needs third-party devs to make more core titles, but that in reality the sales of these games fall off after launch. While slightly different, it still shows the attitudes Nintendo has to boosting other developer’s games.

This news also comes in the week where Nintendo publicly acknowledged the threat Apple poses to the company, although in a slightly indirect way. Speaking to Forbes, Fils-Aime said that Apple could “hurt them” more than Microsoft could, saying: “It’s all about time. I compete with Zynga, I compete with surfing the net, I compete with the newspaper”.

In my opinion a lot of people won’t buy many more games other than the Wii Sports that comes in the box. Most Wii buyers aren’t gamers in the traditional sense, so they’re not necessarily buying games every month. This means for smaller devs on WiiWare or larger ones selling discs, that the Wii might not be as attractive as XBLA or PSN, especially as both start their motion gaming push.

I suggest you read the entire interview as it’s pretty interesting all the way through.

via: Edge