Sony and Microsoft aren’t the only companies making a push to sign new, talented independent developers. During this year’s Game Developers Conference, which took place in March, the Mario maker launched a Wii U developer website where indies could register their interest in making games for the dual-screen console. The response to the movement has been “overwhelming,” according to manager of business development Dan Adelman and senior marketing manager for licensing Damon Baker, with over 1000 different parties signing up.
“We've gotten probably over 1,000, I don't know if we've hit 2,000, developers with really wide-ranging levels of experience,” Adelman told GameSpot in a recent interview. “We've got some who have recently left their jobs in mainstream publishers and are starting a new company, or have been indies for a while. All the way to high school students who are thinking of getting into game development and want to know more about it.”
It’s not as easy as throwing a wheelbarrow full of money at each and every interested developer, though. There are challenges that Nintendo needs to hash out.
“So one of the challenges is going through and it's ultimately a resource allocation issue at that point. We want to support everybody, so how do we do that in the most effective manner and how do we prioritize in just making sure that–our intent is to support everyone, really,” he continued. “The underlying philosophy is that if you can make a game on our systems, we want to find a way for you to be able to do that.”
With Ubisoft not even showing too much downloadable love to Nintendo, now might be the perfect time for the company to scout for some new talent.
