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Nintendo Details WiiWare Demo Programme

Tom Ivan's picture

By Tom Ivan

November 16, 2009

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Nintendo UK has launched a WiiWare demo programme offering free trials of select titles until January 31, 2010.

Internet connected Wii users can now download demos of Square Enix’s Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life As A Darklord, Gaijin Games’ Bit. Trip Beat and Over The Top Games’ NyxQuest: Kindred Spirits.

All demos are directly available from the main entry point of the Wii Shop Channel or from the WiiWare section of the Wii Shop Channel.

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said recently that the company was launching the WiiWare demo scheme in a bid to stimulate sales of downloadable titles, which currently make up just a small part of the firm's business.

Pitched as an environment that’s financially safer for developers to experiment within and create “unusual ideas, quirky games and things that would never have a chance in retail stores”, the WiiWare service was launched in March 2008 in Japan and in May 2008 in North America, Europe and Australia.

WiiWare recently saw its hundredth release in Europe and the latest issue of Edge, E208, features an examination of the current state of the service.

Duncan_Stewart's picture
On November 16th Duncan_Stewart said:

My Wii had a disc error at the weekend and now the drive is awful noisy, I may only be able to play downloads on it soon so any free offerings suit me nicely! If it breaks though I could get one of those black ones....

DubsTF's picture
On November 16th DubsTF said:

While I recognize the practical difficulty/expense of retroactively making demos for the entire WiiWare library, in principle it doesn't really seem fair to only offer demos of a few selected titles, neither to gamers who want to spend their money wisely nor to the potentially great/successful titles that are denied a demo. But still—a step in the right direction, I guess.