The Wii U hasn’t been doing well on the games front, at least games made by third party publishers. But indie developers have somewhat embraced the Wii U and the Wii U eShop to publish their titles. You can find a great library of fun indie games on the eShop, and it’s only going to get better in the future.
According to Nintendo’s Damon Baker, a senior manager in Nintendo’s Licensing department, there are over 50 indie games in development at the moment that are slated for release on the Wii u eShop. And all of the games are made with Unity, of course.
At GDC this year, Unity announced a brand new version of its 3D game engine, Unity 5, with advanced lighting and effects features. Unity has been very popular among indie developers over the past few years, mainly due to its low price and ease of use.
Of the 50 Unity-powered Wii U indie games, nine are showcased at GDC 2014, and 17 of them have been submitted to Nintendo for approval. Baker says those 17 would be released within the next two months. He added:
“And then, we have another fifty that are waiting in the wings, that are coming; so we’ve got a lot of Unity content on the way.”
This is likely a result of the partnership between Unity and Nintendo that was announced last year. With the agreement, Unity made a Wii U-specific engine that is bundled for free with every Wii U dev kit. So far, the partnership looks like it’s paying off well.
Unity has supported on the Wii U since 2012 with Unity 3. The new Unity 5 engine costs just $75/month for developers (but is free to all Wii U developers, as mentioned earlier). You can check out a video showcase of the Unity 5 engine below:
Via Siliconera