Nintendo has eased the requirements for developers to become approved to create games for their Nintendo eShop services, it has been confirmed.
No longer will they be required to have a physical office space, intended to make sure that hardware dev kits and confidential information may be kept secure.
“More and more people are working from home, and we recognise that developers are forming virtual teams around the world,” Nintendo’s Dan Adelman discussed with Gamasutra, reasoning that it has become necessary for Nintendo to reassess their criteria for Nintendo eShop developers.
He continued, “We really have only a few requirements to sign up as a licensed developer with Nintendo. The most notable ones are that you have to have some experience making games, you have to be able to keep any confidential materials like dev kits secure and you have to form a company. None of these should be prohibitive to any indie developer.”
Once approved, developers are then free to release games across regions that fall within Nintendo of America and Nintendo of Europe.
Alongside this, the sales threshold that meant developers couldn’t earn any money from their games until they had reached 6,000 unit sales, has now been removed.
It had been included as a rule to ensure developers would “self-police their own game quality,” although led to a diminished interest in bringing games to Nintendo’s WiiWare service.
“The threshold was thought to be a convenient way to go about it,” Adelman reasoned. “Unfortunately, some great games that just didn’t find an audience wound up being penalised. So for all systems after WiiWare — DSiWare, Nintendo 3DS eShop, and Wii U eShop, we decided to get rid of the thresholds altogether. Developers receive revenue from unit 1.”
Nintendo eShop restrictions lifted for indie developers
