Boing boing has picked up on a sneaky element included in Nintendo's official press release about their next generation Revolution console. It appears the company may offer a platform for bedroom coders to produce content for their machine. From the press release:
Freedom of design: A dynamic development architecture equally accommodates both big-budget, high-profile game "masterpieces" as well as indie games conceived by individual developers equipped with only a big idea.
This is an exciting element not offered by the other big names, who've had more than their fair share of headlines over the past week about the brawn of their forthcoming consoles.
While Sony has offered its dev kits for a hefty price tag since 2002, most of the opportunities for independent development have been limited to PC. If a design feature is included in the out-of-the-box Nintendo Revolution, this could break open the indie development community and push homebrew developers towards new commercial opportunities.
Then again, it could just mean that the insides of the black box are easier to design for than either of the behemoths and that the big N is casting its publishing nets beyond the usual suspects. Personally, I hope it's the former, particularly after witnessing the excellent offerings on display at the Independent Game Festival Awards at GDC 2005.
