Ex-Naughty Dogs doing WiiWare game

By Robert Purchese Published 28 January, 2008

Steel Penny accepted into club.

Steel Penny Games has been accepted into Nintendo's WiiWare stable of developers, GamesIndustry.biz reports.

It's the Texas-based studio formed last year by Naughty Dogs Jason Hughes and Andrew Gilmour. You know, from the Uncharted: Drake's Fortune bunch.

Steel Penny spent much of 2007 slaving away on a fancy new engine geared towards the Wii, and has an original IP scheduled to launch this year.

Hughes described his strategy as "the modern equivalent of the garage method for an independent to gain a foothold in the industry - a unique opportunity WiiWare presents that we appreciate."

"I am impressed with the egalitarian approach Nintendo has taken toward WiiWare developers. It allows the risk burden to shift back onto the creative developers."

Which is confusing. But he sounds excited, so that's good.

WiiWare, known as Wii Software in Europe, was announced last June. It lets developers make small games for digital distribution, much like Live Arcade and PlayStation Network.

Nintendo has yet to spout a date for Wii Software, although one developer accidentally let spill that we would see it in March.

Try it, but it's unlikely GamesIndustry.biz will buy it.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (4) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • TONYgr #1 4 years ago

    yuppie!

  • zoidberg #2 4 years ago

    don't you just have to be a wii developer and make a small budget game to be in wii software? I didn't think there'd be much of a problem getting in.

  • NickNack #3 4 years ago

    When Wii launched I thought Nintendo might have been onto something, but after owning one, selling one, seeing what developers are doing with the hardware, I can't help but feel it's the weakest console Nintendo have ever put out, content and power wise. I just really really hate it, shame as SNES is my favourite console of all time... Miyamoto is a sell out imo, sold his soul to the casuals . From Zelda LTTP, Ocarina of time, Super mario world, to... Wiifit.

    What happened?.
    Edited by 2 at 28/01/08 @ 14:57

  • Gnort #4 4 years ago

    Why isn't it called WiiWare in Europe?

  • lemonfist #5 4 years ago

    Probably because someone thought it sounded too much like warez.