Back in June, Nintendo announced it’s WiiWare service, which the company described as “a game-creation service that will allow developers large and small to create new downloadable video game content for sale by Nintendo through the Wii Shop Channel”. Now some developer guidelines for WiiWare were mentioned in a podcast at IGN, which Leo Chan at Neo Seeker discusses:

Prospective WiiWare developers must first be officially licenced by Nintendo in order to release titles for download. They can then approach either Nintendo or a third party publisher in order market their title for production/release. In both cases the other party will stand to receive a cut in potential profit; IGN believes Nintendo’s asking price is 35 percent for any WiiWare title they help publish. Developers estimate the average production budget for a WiiWare lies at under $100,000 USD. Licensed WiiWare developers are limited to releasing one downloadable WiiWare title per month. Additionally, Nintendo is reportedly enforcing a filesize limit on downloadable WiiWare titles; the current maximum is 40MB, but this is not apparently set in stone.

According to 1up.com, “Nintendo is said to be taking 35% of profits from games sold using the service with the developer taking 65%.”