No Paid Feature Slots In eShops Among Benefits Of Publishing On Nintendo Consoles

Ed Valiente, Business Development Manager at Nintendo of Europe, has been making more waves at the Indie Games Collective event in London. In addition to the announcement of Miiverse on 3DS, Valiente has taken the time to outline several of the benefits of publishing on Nintendo eShops. Foremost on the list is Nintendo’s policy that publishers cannot pay for featured placement in their eShops, meaning that a small indie game will appear featured right next to more mainstream first-party titles like Mario or Zelda. Additionally, Valiente revealed that Nintendo is developing special promo codes that publishers can give to help distribute their games to the media before actually being launched.

These new announcements come at a time when Nintendo is working hard to bolster its appeal to indie developers. The company has caught flak in the past for having policies in place that  were not conducive to small developers looking to bring their games to Nintendo consoles. With Wii U desperately in need of a boost in sales, equal feature placement in the eShop and promo codes that facilitate the ease of distribution should be two factors that help attract more developers to the system, and hopefully, more buyers as well.