In just under two weeks, Nintendo will launch their WiiWare service in the U.S. Yet with 13 days to go, Nnooo creative director Nic Watt still doesn’t know how much his WiiWare title, “Pop,” will cost.

He does have a range for his multiplayer, bubble-based shooter: 500 to 800 Wii Points (translated: between $5 and $8).

“For a new company like ourselves, pricing is a really tough issue particularly on something like a downloadable service where there are games at a variety of prices,” said Watt in an e-mail interview with MTV Multiplayer last week. “Disc-based games are somewhat easier as they all generally retail for about the same price.”

Gamers have price and value expectations for Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network. For now, Watt uses Virtual Console as a yard stick for perceived value. “We feel we are somewhere between a NES and SNES game in price,” he said.

One thing that WiiWare won’t have, though, is demos. Demos are a requirement for XBL Arcade but merely an option on PSN. For Watt, the difference is moot; he doesn’t think a demo would help “Pop” out.

Read more…

Over the last few weeks I’ve been asking top people at Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony about game demos for the downloadable games offered via Xbox Live Arcade, WiiWare and PlayStation Network.

I can’t get the same answer twice.

Microsoft – yes, demos are a must
Nintendo — no, demos are not required
Sony – sometimes demos are good, sometimes bad.

Keep reading to find out why they feel differently.

Read more…

Gamers, don’t worry if you regret a purchase of Derek Smart’s latest space sequel, “Galactic Command: Echo Squad.” You can get your money back.

Smart is, to put it mildly, an outspoken developer of space simulation games who loudly walks the line between passionately defending his creative works and at times outright attacking his own audience. Smart’s own personal biography describes himself as “an eccentric and vocal personality.”

But he’s okay if you don’t like “Galactic Command.” Smart commented on popular PC news site Blue’s News that he’d refund gamers who purchased “Galactic Command” ahead of its release and weren’t satisfied. Not only that, but Smart won’t even disable your license key, just in case you want to come back and play again.

Isn’t he afraid people will purchase with every intent to complain for a free version? “I’m quite certain that there may be other takers. Who knows. But regardless, people know who they’re dealing with, so its not like they’re going to try and pull a fast one. After all, this is Derek Smart we’re talking about :D,” he told Multiplayer in an e-mail exchange.

Encouraging apprehensive players to check out his games without a currency exchange isn’t really new to Smart. In 2001, he released the original “Battlecruiser 3000AD.” The follow-up, 2005’s “Battlecruiser Millennium,” has been downloaded 34,689 times, according to Fileplanet. And just last month, Smart uploaded the four-year-old “Universal Combat” online for gamers to download free-of-charge.

“Most of my legacy games, even the barely four-year-old original ‘Universal Combat (UC) ‘ game, I release for free on the Internet when their shelf life expires,” Smart said. “I own all my IP. As soon as a publisher’s license rights expires, the game goes online for free.”

You can download his games at Fileplanet.

Even if you’re not a fan of Smart, it’s hard to argue with free, right?

“We think that WiiWare offers an opportunity for content that may otherwise not be developed.”
–Nintendo’s Tom Prata To MTV Multiplayer, February 20, 2008

If you were sitting in on my interview with Nintendo of America’s Tom Prata at the Game Developers Conference you might have thought I was pitching him a Wii horoscope program that features Miis.

I wasn’t, though you have to admit the Wii horoscope channel downloadable through WiiWare is a great idea. (No? Disagree?)

I was trying to get beyond the boilerplate. It was the Wednesday of GDC week and I had an interview with Prata, who is director of product development at Nintendo of America and the man Nintendo made available to reporters to talk about the new downloadable games service on the Wii. Prata was more than happy to reiterate the fundamentals — downloadable service, unrestricted in terms of content, launching May 12, “developers being able to create their own ideas in combination with the Wii remote,” “wonderful experiences for consumers to enjoy.”

I had already seen “LostWinds” and interviewed game developer David Braben about it. I had already heard the creators of my Independent Games Festival pick for game of show, “World of Goo,” invoke Prata’s name and then clam up when someone else asked them how their game would be coming to the Wii.

I knew the WiiWare basics. I wanted to know more. Hence my questions about Miis, horoscopes, demos, Americans and more.

Pitching A WiiWare Horoscope

I talked to Prata for just under a half hour in a room in Nintendo’s GDC area marked “Zelda.” Prata told me about how he and his team, in concert with Nintendo’s Japan office and Nintendo of Europe, have been talking about WiiWare to developers around the world. He told me he met with 20 developers just at GDC, game makers from the U.S., Canada, Australia and South America. He said about 100 games are in development for expected North American WiiWare release, a mix of games for hardcore and casual users. And he said that “about 80% of the content is being created by companies that haven’t published on Wii before.”

Prata kept using the word “content” to describe what they all might offer to the WiiWare service.

I asked him if that word choice was deliberate. Did that mean non-games were allowed? What if, say, someone pitched a WiiWare horoscope?

Read more…

San Francisco — The first downloadable Wii game I was ever shown was ‘LostWinds,’ a promising platformer from British game studio Frontier Developments. And I saw it just yesterday.

Patrick Klepek and I checked it out together, settling in with Frontier’s top designer David Braben to look at a laptop presentation in the crowded lobby of the W Hotel right near all of the major Game Developers Conference halls. Braben showed us video on a computer, not a Wii, but was kind enough to wave his hands to show us how his game would be controlled.

So… “LostWinds” is a WiiWare game. That means it will be downloadable on the Wii sometime near the date of the launch of the new service, which Nintendo announced this week will occur in the U.S. on May 12. Gamers won’t just be downloading classic games through their console anymore. They’ll be able to download new games.

“LostWinds” features what Braben considers a “third way” for Wii controls. Read on to find out what that means and why Braben thinks the game presents some interesting ideas about how beautiful and mellow a Wii action game might be.

Read more…

On the eve of the Game Developers Conference, John Hight, director of product development, Santa Monica
Studios, Sony Computer Entertainment America, spent 40 minutes on the phone with me talking about the past and future of Sony’s downloadable games service for PS3.

Why?

Maybe because Sony wants to counteract whatever message will be sent from Microsoft’s John Schappert, when the Xbox 360 exec deliver a GDC keynote on Wednesday entitled: “A Future Wide Open: Unleashing the Creative Community”? No, Hight said, he doesn’t know what Microsoft has planned.

Because now is a good time to re-tell the story of PSN and explain how it’s different from not just Xbox Live Arcade but the downloadable WiiWare service that Nintendo will be showcasing later this week ?

Getting warmer.

So we talked about that — about what PSN is and why its line-up has included some very unusual games.

And we talked about some of the PSN’s biggest issues: pricing, size of games (a 2Gig on is coming!) and the availability — or lack thereof — of demos for every game on the service.

If you own a PS3 or if you’re a young or aspiring game developer, this interview is for you.
Read more…