WiiU e shop officially closed for agreements with devs

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FrankenGraphics
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WiiU e shop officially closed for agreements with devs

Post by FrankenGraphics »

For NOA and NOE regions, the window for applying for software releases on the Wii U e shop closed Dec 22nd, and will close in Japan on the 29th. Support for devs will remain in service in early 2018, but no new applications will be handled.
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rainwarrior
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Re: WiiU e shop officially closed for agreements with devs

Post by rainwarrior »

Yet PS3 is still getting a trickle of PSN releases despite having 6 years on the Wii U. ;)

TBH it's not a big loss. Wii U eShop was kind of a wasteland, unfortunately. As a consumer I was always disappointed by the lack of good stuff available. As a dev, if I'd released on it I'd have been disappointed by its high cost overhead and poor sales, though.
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Re: WiiU e shop officially closed for agreements with devs

Post by FrankenGraphics »

One thing "good" for devs were the ease of getting something published. No annual fee for access to the platform. You didn't need to have a registered company. Which, ultimately, was bad both for the eshop and devs in the long run, with all the shovelware pollution.

Apparently they're a bit more selective with the switch (the eshop is actively curated, meaning they'll not just look at content ratings, URL destinations and product placements, but the quality of the product itself), but there's still no annual fee.

While the category system of the switch shop is a bit of a mess (seems that certain games can be found under almost every category at times), the overall quality seems much higher.

Also, I'm not sure if it's an actual requirement technically speaking, but it seems at least strongly encouraged to use unity for everything.
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Re: WiiU e shop officially closed for agreements with devs

Post by rainwarrior »

It wasn't "polluted" with shovelware. All the major platforms have shovelware, and I'd actually say Wii U has less of it than other places. It has less of everything though. Most developers knew it was a bust to release there and avoided it. (PS4 and XB1 publishing policies are both more indie-friendly than Wii U's IMO.)

You don't notice the shovelware so much on PS4 because there's a variety of good stuff to look at in the store instead. On Wii U there's hardly anything at all on the store, you can't look at a "best of" selection because there isn't enough to make such a thing. It's like, 1st party, then maybe minecraft and shovel knight. It was so spare that Meme Run ended up on the console's main menu for a month or two because it was the only thing selling on eShop at the time!
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Re: WiiU e shop officially closed for agreements with devs

Post by FrankenGraphics »

That's a good point. I don't have any experience with those platforms so i can't put much validity behind my words. My points of reference is Wii and iOS. Compared to wii, i thought it was worse (probably for the reason you mentioned - wii had lots and lots of good stuff in the virtual console department). Compared to iOS App Store wii U could be considered clean, and that's despite apple filtering out at least some with its annual fee (probably saves them a good chunk of work and money). Anyway, them being more conservative as for now with who they let in on the switch seems to be in response to bad software more than in response of lack of good software?
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Re: WiiU e shop officially closed for agreements with devs

Post by rainwarrior »

Wii sold 10x as many consoles as Wii U. Much better market for everything.

Even with Wii Nintendo was pretty shitty about life expectancy of online services, IMO. It's actually a big reason I don't want a switch.

I enjoyed my Wii U, but Nintendo clearly felt it was a failure and wants to move on quickly.
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