Nintendo has been taking notes, and good ones at that.
Frozenbyte's Marketing Manager, Mikael Haveri, shared during an interview with IGN that he's been extremely happy with how Nintendo is supporting developers on the Wii U. While freedom to set prices and track sales easily were cited as reasons for his satisfaction, it was the cost of updates that made the biggest impression.
Simply put they've told us that there are no basic payments for each patch (which were pretty high on most platforms) and that we can update our game almost as much as we want. For indie developers this is huge.
In contrast, developers have to pay around $40,000 to release a patch on the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360. The result of this costly but welcoming choice for Nintendo is that indie developers will be attracted to the Wii U. Ultimately, it's the game library of a console that counts, and games like Flower, Torchlight II, and Braid have had major impacts despite their small size.
