WiiWare games coming in 2008.
The WiiWare section of the Wii Shop Channel currently holds two pieces of software: The Internet Channel (that’s the Opera web browser) and the Everybody Votes Channel. Nintendo has dropped a press release letting us know that starting next year, those long-casually-chatted-about download-distributed games for Wii will start to appear there as well. These are the games like Impossible Mission that were mentioned a while ago and continue to be discussed from time to time.
It’s remarkable the way Nintendo tries to spin WiiWare as something new, when it’s been there since the Intenet Channel beta debuted. What’s up with that? They’re also trying to sell it as the means by which small developers can cheaply get their content out there for people to buy, which I’m all for. But we’ll see just how small the developers are when the games start to hit. See below for the full release, which I wanted to post yesterday.
NINTENDO’S WIIWARE PAVES THE WAY FOR FRESH GAMES, COOL CONSUMER EXPERIENCES
Nintendo Sets a New Paradigm: One Game Can Still Make a Difference
SANTA MONICA, Calif., June 27, 2007
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Nice snail.
I feel bad for Wii owners that really want to buy heaps of these games. It’s clearly the biggest profit center on the system for Nintendo with no physical disc and packaging to produce, and now the hardcore fans who want to buy everything from past consoles they’ve owned to play at will on the Wii just can’t.
If arcade games show up, they’re even worse off.
As one of my favorite security researchers always says, trying to copy protect digital files is like trying to make water not be wet. That said, there are hurdles Nintendo could put up that would make copying downloaded games from external storage to a friend’s system extremely onerous.