“The partnership also grandfathers in the existing 1.2 million Unity licensees to the Wii U platform”. Eh? So it’s not a separate license like the Wii?
–Eric
Ok, much as I respect Agent Parsec and I’m thrilled to see his game going as viral as it is; am I the only one that does a major facepalm every time I see Slender mentioned as a “big Unity title”?
“the Wii U deployment add-on will create an amazing opportunity for our massive community of developers to showcase their incredible creativity on one of the most anticipated and innovative gaming platforms to date.”
I think that answers it.
I’m curious about that too. Does this mean that all ‘existing’ Unity Pro users get a free Wii U license or does it mean that everyone using Unity Pro currently and future will have free deployment to Wii U?
Interesting stuff.
I wonder if it will have an impact on Ms and Sony too? It was a point I was going to bring up in the ‘Why Consoles wont die’ thread, that I felt the growing acceptance of indie developers, especially for creating small to mid range successful games on iOS, Android and PC platforms would appear to be a market that the big 3 console manufactures can no longer ignore.
Granted the big 3 all had some degree of accessibility for indie developers this gen, but nothing on the scale of the Mobile or even PC platforms offer. So whilst you could use Unity to develop a game for all three consoles the licensing cost and publishing cost are simply too prohibitive for the vast majority of indie developers. This move by Nintendo would appear to be the first step in breaking that mould and I would be surprised if MS and Sony don’t follow, assuming they are both committed to next gen release and that by the time they are released the bottom hasn’t fallen out of the market. 
It’s going viral by the time we speak. Everybody is talking now about this partnership! Very good move Nintendo and Unity!
I believe the addon will be sold as the other addons (400 basic and 1500 pro).
Is there any Unity ninja over here to confirm about this new license? If you know more about this, please give more details!
This smell good :)… So who is next…psvita ? ^^
definitely an add-on:
Saying “1.2 million Unity licensees” means everybody, not just Pro users (though I’m sure Unity Tech would be totally ecstatic if there were that many Pro licensees 
), since Free needs to be licensed too. The phrasing “grandfathered in” makes it sound like the built-in web/desktop/native client publishing options, but even if it’s an add-on like iOS/Android, that’s still a pretty big deal compared to the current console licenses.
–Eric
If it’s the case of just paying for the add one wow that would be huge…
While it may be possible to easily build for the Wii U, there is no way Nintendo would allow any developer off the streets to make a game for their system. You’ll likely still need to jump through all the hoops that Nintendo requires, including having an established office (with high security), have a long history of published titles, truckloads of money, etc, etc.
For instance, you can easily build an iOS game (assuming you buy the iOS Unity license), but that doesn’t get you out of the Apple Developer license fee. This will be the same thing… multiplied by a few hundred thousand.
Probably not, if it’s really an add-on like iOS/Android. Purely because of economies of scale…they can’t sell a Wii U add-on for $400 if only a few people are going to buy it. Maybe Nintendo is going to do some kind of program like XNA indie games.
–Eric
Looks pretty sweet to me
I love the sounds of this, regardless of the details of the license. I assume Nintendo will have some way to weed out shovelware from getting into their main marketplace, but just having a whole extra platform to target with relative ease is great news.
Well I guess it would be either “invite only” or maybe cost an arm and leg.
I don’t see nintendo letting in hobbyist for this .
But someone who’s sold like 30k on the App Store might get a shot .
I’m still aiming for the Ouya.
And I’m happy to spend my 1337th post on saying that
THIS .
I’m not the biggest fan of Oyua, but your kiding yourself if you think any of the big 3 are going to make it easy to get on their systems .
I disagree, if Nintendo aim to keep the ‘status quo’, then why bother making such an announcement?
As I said above, the big 3 console manufactures have to be concerned with the raise of other gaming platforms, supported by a huge army of indies and the fact they are being squeezed on all sides. Mobile devices are getting very close to current gen levels of capabilities and by all accounts next gen consoles are not going to be anywhere near the leap ahead they were in past generations. indeed there is speculation that they wont even match current PC levels.
Sales of this gen haven’t match last gen and now there are a plethora of devices that can do so much of what consoles used to do that I suspect next gen will sell even less. Not low enough to kill consoles, but certainly enough that MS, Sony and Nintendo have to be worried.
One obvious route then is for them to open up the consoles to make use of the growing indie/mobile market. Granted I doubt it will be as low cost to enter as it is for say iOS, but I think the days of needing a large bank roll to develop for them are over, at least for the smaller, casual game market i’m talking about.
I could easily see UT selling the Wii-U addon for $1-2k, then you having to pay Nintendo a few grand to get into their’ program’ and of course it will be done via their online store, which they will take 30% from. For Nintendo its a win-win situation. They’ll still have their AAA release titles, their first party titles etc, but at the same time can compete against the likes of Apple store with cheaper, causal games.