Developers WiiWare Sales Threshold Revealed

It came to light last week by Gamasutra that Nintendo held third party developers to a specific sales criteria for developing WiiWare titles. In other words, the third party developer had to sell a certain amount of games before Nintendo would pay them royalty, if this target was not met then the developer would not get paid a single dime. Now thanks to Kotaku we know what those figures are. Head inside if you want to know.

Kotaku state that a developer with specific WiiWare knowledge reported these figures. Once they have been met then Nintendo pay them royalty on a 65/35 split in the developers favour:

North America

If game is over 16MB – 6,000 units
If game is under 16MB – 4,000 units

Europe

If game is over 16MB – 3,000 units
If game is under 16MB – 2,000 units

Unusually the sales threshold varies depending on the size of the game in MB. I imagine this is to encourage developers to design lower bandwidth games though it still seems a little odd.

Though this may seem a stingy strategy on Nintendo’s part, if the developer does sell over these unit sales then atleast they make 65% of the turnover. That is on the total sales and not just those that have sold over the minimum requirement above.

Last week Nintendo replied to the original Gamasutra article by stating the story was “rumour and speculation” and that “The terms, conditions and contracts between Nintendo and developers are a private and confidential matter.”

What are your thoughts on this? Are Nintendo being stingy or just protecting their profits?

Source: Kotaku