Nintendo eases the Wii development learning curve
It looks like Nintendo are aiming to make development for the Wii as easy as they can for third party developers. Already they’ve used similar architecture to the GameCube which allows developers who have developed for the GameCube to be instantly more familiar with how the Wii works, and now Nintendo has revealed details of middle-ware tools for potential Wii developers to remove even more of the learning curve associated with developing games for it’s new console.
More Inside Nintendo representative at the Game Developers Conference, Takeshi Shimada, revealed tidbits of information about these middle-ware tools being developed for the Wii.
Of those mentioned, one of the more useful tools was dubbed “”NintendoWare””, which allows developers to emulate the Wii hardware on a PC. Advantage here being that developers will no longer be required to load the code onto a development unit in order to test the code. They will simply be able to test the game code in an emulated environment.
As well as this tool, Shimada mentioned tools allowing for “”easy to incorporate fur-shading”” and “”predictive input””.
Once these tools are fully developed and distributed to developers, we can reasonably expect to see more continued third party support, and possibly support from up-and-coming development teams who otherwise may not have been able to develop for the Wii’s unique control method.
