Wii U News: Nintendo President Reggie Fils-Aime Discusses Indie Gaming

There has been a lot of focus from Microsoft and Sony concerning the indie game market, and how both companies are trying to lure indie game developers to create games for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Now Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime has spoken up about indie gaming in a new interview with IGN, and he details Nintendo's plan to try and get indie developers to put out games on Nintendo consoles:

"The independent developer, especially those developers who have experience, who've shown real capabilities, we love those independent developers ... And what we're doing is creating even more of an infrastructure for a brand-new independent developer, someone who's never created content before, to be effective on our platform. So it's an area that we're spending a lot more time and a lot more energy to create the infrastructure to help these developers publish their content and be effective. It's something that we have had to learn how to do. Because our systems aren't straightforward for a developer who hasn't had a lot of experience."

Fils-Aime also discussed how the company has tried to make themselves friendlier to indie game developers, such as partnering with Unity and having indie games appear with other Nintendo games on eShop, rather than in a separate category:

"First, you want the tools to be able to create your content and bring it onto the system. That's why we've announced the relationship with Unity. That's why we've created the Nintendo Web Framework. Again, we've taken steps on the development side to make our system independent-friendly. Second thing we've done is we've created the merchandising capabilities, right? So when you're on the eShop, how we promote and merchandise content ... You'll see that we're merchandising indies' content right alongside our content. There's no separate area. There's no challenge of discovery to find this content. That's what the independent developers really love, because they know that consumers are going to the eShop looking for. If there's a value program for some Virtual Console content, or if we've re-released a new piece of content, and right alongside that is going to be indies' content. They love that."

With these steps, Nintendo has built up a solid indie game presence on the Wii U, and the company has lent itself well to that section of gamers. While some big third party companies may be hesitant to bring their games to the Wii U, indie developers are lining up to put their games on the console.