Originally Published on Game Politics.
While many consumers are still deciding on whether to buy or not buy the Wii U this coming holiday season, Nintendo is busy making the choice to develop for the console as easy as possible for indie game developers.
Gamasutra reports that Nintendo and Unity3D have teamed up to integrate Unity3D into the Wii U development kit. This partnership will ensure a seamless transition for Unity developers into the Nintendo ecosystem.
The agreement affords Nintendo the rights to distribute a Wii U-only version of Unity to its developers, both in-house and external, as part of its Wii U development kit.
“These guys will all have access to the same tools, and through our support and Nintendo’s support, we want to kind of bring that ecosystem to the Wii U ecosystem, and help many of them to be very successful in that,” Unity CEO David Helgason tells Gamasutra.
While a developer will still have to meet the requirements of Nintendo in order to become a licensed developer, this announcement will certainly get a lot more attention from the indie game development crowd.
This collaboration between Nintendo and Unity will also make it far easier for Unity to offer support and tools for game developers. With the Wii, Unity had been pretty much on its own when it came to offering tools for porting games to the Wii. This will hopefully make life simpler for both Unity and the game developers using its tools.
Hopefully, this news will also spark confidence in consumers who might be concerned over a lack of software. While this news will not mean more games at launch, it will mean more games down the line and potentially in the first year of the console’s life. That is what’s important in building consumer confidence.
-E. Zachary Knight, GamePolitics Correspondent
