Report: Nintendo arms WiiWare 'secret war'

It's been noted on numerous occasions that the current-generation console race is a fallacy of sorts, considering the markedly different approaches that the three major players have taken with their machines. Whereas Sony caters to the tenchophiles with high-end hardware and a Blu-ray player in the PlayStation 3, Nintendo has mass-market adoption in mind for the Wii, with accessible gameplay and affordable technology. Meanwhile, Microsoft's Xbox 360 occupies a middle ground, being technologically advanced but also priding itself on the ease of use of its online service, Xbox Live.

However, underneath this tangible console race lays a rush to the virtual space that has begun to pick up adversarial steam. With Sony planning to open up Home and Microsoft looking to launch the indie-friendly XNA-powered Community Channel on Xbox Live later this year, Nintendo has been plugging away at its own original-game-focused portal WiiWare, which is due to launch in North America on May 19. The format purveyor noted during this year's Game Developers Conference that more than 100 titles are under construction for the service.

According to Develop magazine, Nintendo's tactics at winning developer support for WiiWare have been characterized as "a secret war" against its competitors by some industry insiders. Aside from the Wii dramatically outpacing the competition as a go-to talking point, Nintendo has reportedly been keen to point out to potential WiiWare suitors that its service provides the best environment to both make and sell games.

"The cost of making a game for WiiWare can be significantly less than that of an XBLA or PSN game, firstly because the hardware is a lot cheaper and secondly because the SDK Nintendo provides is very detailed," Nnooo's creative director Nic Watt told Develop. "It should be noted that we can purchase almost two to four Wii development kits for one Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 one, which as you can appreciate for a small company can affect our budget a lot."

Nintendo has also apparently been touting the fact that WiiWare will offer a distinct advantage of Xbox Live due to the lack of "clutter" such as retro games. "Nintendo has made it very clear to us that we'll not only be making a better royalty rate from WiiWare games, but we'll also have a better chance of selling games--the service won't be clogged up with the retro titles that have blighted the chances of many independent studios on Xbox Live Arcade," a studio business development boss told Develop under conditions of anonymity. Speaking under similar conditions, another WiiWare developer said, "Frankly, we're not looking at making games for Xbox Live Arcade because the service is full of s***."

Develop notes that Microsoft recently halved royalty rates for first-party-published Xbox Live Arcade titles from 70 percent to 35 percent, though the 360 maker will bear some of the localization and worldwide game-rating brunt, a move that has incensed some developers.