Unity for the Wii, announced at last!

Dear community and friends.

Our Nintendo Wii port of the runtime has now been in development for well over a year. It's also been working for several months, and licensed out to a handful of customers. But now we finally got Nintendo's approval as a "Nintendo Third Party Tool" vendor, and so we can finally speak aloud about this.

Check out the announcement here:

http://unity3d.com/company/news/wii-press

Unity Wii is being licensed under a separate license, and you have to be a Nintendo Wii developer (info and registration at http://warioworld.com) before we can license this to you. Contact sales@unity3d.com for more info.

Yay.

d.

 

And the all-flying, singing, dancing feature page: http://unity3d.com/unity/features/wii-publishing

 

Congratz ;-) This is *really* cool! Even though I'm not planning to develop for the Wii in short term, it's definitely cool to have this as an option long-term ;-)

Keep on rocking ;-)

Jashan

 

w00t!

 

Sweet! Are you guys going to publicly announce the license fees or royalty sharing or however it works?

Cheers,
-Jon

 

For now the answer to that is no, those that are interested should write us at sales@unity3d.com to get that sort of information.

 

awesome, congrats guys!

 

Congratulation on that.
This is definitely a great option for all those with the needed funding and luck to get onto the Nintedo Dev Program.

 

Cool! Note typo on page:

http://unity3d.com/company/news.html#Unity-to-Support-Wii-Console-as-Authorized-Middleware-Provider

"supporting the Nintendo Wii? console"

 

I wonder how hard it actually is to become a Wii developer? Looks like they aren't very open to working with small unknown developers (like me).
http://www.warioworld.com/licensing/becomelicensee/

 

This is fantastic news and it makes sense to have such a tool for a console as flexible as the Wii. Hopefully we'll see some great new and innovative WiiWare titles come from this over the next couple years.

I'm also curious to see how the Unity iPhone toolset will turn out. (Perhaps some brave souls out there will create the first iPhone/iPod Touch to Wii game interfaces using these tools...)

 

Fixed.

 

Great news. I look forward to playing lots of Unity-created Wii games.

I wonder, tough, is Nintendo litigiously forcing the Wii controller support to be limited to Wii development? I like all of them, including the Wii Wheel peripheral, which isn't really a controller, per se. There are solutions for using these controllers with Bluetooth-enabled computers, certainly, but they're not plug-and-play for the average user.

Because they're Bluetooth devices, I assume that we'd be seeing at least one PlayStation 3 game that used a Wii controller, if it was legally viable.

 

Since Unity is now an Authorized Wii development tool, does that mean that Unity Technologies is an authorized developer?

In other words, for the small developers who stand no chance of getting a Wiiware developer license, can Unity Technolgies be the publisher and take a cut?

Thus, you guys become the middle man to Nintendo?

edit: Forgot to say CONGRATULATIONS!

 

Clearly that's a question best answered by Nintendo but from my point of view I would imagine that they will take legal action to enforce limitations, especially against PlayStation content using the Wii controllers (competitive consoles aren't going to be allowed to utilize the key selling point of the Wii - the controllers).

But again, I'm not Nintendo so...

Yes, we had to become one in order to get a dev kit.

At this point we're not looking at becoming an intermediary in that fashion as there are a few too many steps involved in between. You need the dev kit to do proper testing against the actual hardware, you need the proper Wii-enabled Unity license to do your development with the Wii controllers. Putting us in the middle is far more than just "hey, you publish it for me!", it would involve enough dev work that we're just not interested in taking on that role.

Thanks.

 

Awesome Work Guys!

Is there a chance that you will be supporting the Wii controller on the Mac, so we can develop games for the Wii prior to getting a license? Being an independent developer, it seems unlikely that I will be able to get a licensed dev status, prior to having a product that I can show to publishers, but I would like to try and develop for Wii.

AGhost

 

For the foreseeable future built-in controller access is limited to those with a dev kit and that have licensed the Wii-enabled version of Unity.

 

Yeah, I saw that, but it only works with pro (and I'm a poor indie).
Anyways, I would love to see them bring out Wii Tools for the average user so they can develop a great game, then bring it to a publisher. But I guess we will have to wait for that.

On a side note, will the Wii Unity require Pro?

AGhost

 

Is it possible for those with a Wii license to deploy games on PC/Mac/Browser that
make use of the Wii controller? Aside from the legality, is the API for Wii controller I/O included in the standalone and webplayer builds?

 

And now you guys need to work on Unity 360

Although microsoft will probably be snobby asswipes :twisted:

 

Grats!

 

has UT looked in the licensing costs etc for WiiWare yet? If they have I'll contact sales again.

oh yeah, congrats on being official!

Cheers.

 

We support both Wii retail and WiiWare, so feel free to contact sales@unity3d.com to get the details.

d.

 

This is awesome! I think it will take me about 2 years to be able to get a Developer-License... but its a good motivation for getting better every day!

By the way... How is the iPhone development going?

 

Yes, and on top of that you'll still need to license the Unity engine for use on the Wii and obtain a Wii dev kit.

No, we are not including Wii controller support in the standalone nor the web player build (legal limitation).

What David said.

Separate topic for discussion elsewhere. In general the tech project is moving along, with some glitches that we're working on. Our beta is still on hold at least until Apple's iPhone developer program is out of beta. When will that happen? We dunno...

 

Monday, of course...

 

hey congrats UT! now i gotta go rent office space :x

 

Are there any Unity Wii titles that have shipped yet? I looked at wiishop tonight and there are about 3 titles I want to download. There is a bunch of new stuff.

 

are licensing fees lower for publishing wiiware? wii license costs seem really high, i suppose a game released on disk would be ok, but who knows what kind of $$ wii wares pull in

 

I believe that the first Unity authored Wii title either just shipped or is just about to ship, I'll confirm the details and post another reply when I have them.

This information is readily available on our website. In particular take a look at the Wii Publishing feature page:

Wii Publishing

In particular look at the bottom-right of the page under pricing and licensing and you'll see that a WiiWare title is $15k and a retail title is $30k.

As mentioned above you can also drop us a line at sales@unity3d.com if you have any questions.

 

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Just to attach it to this thread, the first Unity Wii based game is just out!

http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=17593

... several others in the works of course

d.

 

:arrow: Hi, we already have a Wii game ended and we are developing the next. For the following we would like to try Unity, but we use Windows to work.

:?: I wondered if the Unity 2.5 for Windows can be used to work with version Unity 2.1 for Wii.

Thanks

 

As of the Unity 2.5 launch no, Unity Wii will transition over in the months following (but it will transition over!).

 

Is this information still true? I'm either blind, missing the obvious or this information has gone from the quoted url.

 

Dear Unity Team,

I hope this message finds you well. My name is Dakota Thorpe, and I am writing to you on behalf of a passionate community of developers and enthusiasts who are dedicated to homebrew game development for various platforms. We greatly admire the work Unity has done in empowering developers to create innovative and engaging experiences, and we are particularly interested in obtaining a copy of Unity for Wii for archival purposes.

Our community believes in the importance of preserving historical software and tools, and we are committed to ensuring that valuable resources like Unity for Wii are not lost to time. Having access to Unity for Wii would not only allow us to archive this significant piece of software but also provide an opportunity to explore its capabilities for potential homebrew game development projects.

We understand that Unity for Wii may no longer be actively supported or officially distributed. However, we kindly request your assistance in facilitating our efforts to obtain a copy of this software for archival purposes. Our intention is to responsibly preserve and document its functionality, ensuring that future generations of developers can learn from and appreciate the contributions made by Unity to the gaming community.

If providing a copy of Unity for Wii is not possible due to licensing constraints or other considerations, we would appreciate any guidance or assistance you can offer in navigating the appropriate channels to achieve our goal.

Thank you for your time and consideration. We look forward to the possibility of preserving Unity for Wii and continuing to contribute to the vibrant world of homebrew game development.

Best regards,

Dakota Thorpe.

 

The only people who can distribute the Wii build tools are Nintendo themselves.

 

Unity would have to violate their license agreements to do that which would not only lead to lawsuits but to the complete destruction of all current and future relationships with Nintendo.

There is no possibility of legally preserving them thanks to the files being solely available through Nintendo, and as illegal means are not only required to obtain the files but to use the builds made with them there is no way they will involve themselves in this request.

 

Necro.
Closing.