Robert Pelloni, the guy who made his own DS RPG and then tried to lock himself up in a room for 100 days when Nintendo didn’t give him a dev kit, made a lot of noise earlier this year. Now Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aime’s telling his side of the story.
Robert Pelloni thinks Nintendo gave him a raw deal. He claims he poured 15,000 hours into the creation of Bob’s Game, a “retail-length RPG type console game” that he hoped to release on the DS. When Nintendo declined to grant him the software development kit he’d need to release the game officially, he kinda lost it, locking himself in his room in protest and claiming that he’s “far better than Miyamoto, Itoi, Kojima, Carmack, and Wright COMBINED.”
You can’t blame the guy for going a little crazy after all that he went through, but the fact of the matter is, we haven’t heard the other side of the story yet. MTV’s Stephen Totilo recently prodded Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aime to shed some light on this unfortunate saga, and Fils-Aime was ready to share.
Pelloni definitely wasn’t making it all up, that’s for sure. “He did submit to be a licensed developer,” Fils-Aime said. “We have an evaluation process. We evaluated the opportunity.” Apparently after evaluation, Nintendo decided, for whatever reason, that Pelloni “did not meet the requirements to be a licensed developer.”
So what are the requirements to be a licensed developer, then? Can’t you just be a normal guy and have a quality product? Fils-Aime seems to think so, pointing to the example of 2D Boy’s success with World of Goo on WiiWare. Contrary to Pelloni’s accusations, Nintendo doesn’t have any problems with the little guy. “We love taking big ideas with small budgets and bringing them to life,” Fils-Aime said.
What makes 2D Boy different from Robert Pelloni then, Totilo wondered. Was it 2D Boy’s credentials, being a team with ex-Electronic Arts employees? Fils-Aime doesn’t think so. “My hope is that any developer who has a compelling idea will reach out to our licensing organization and share their idea and go through the process of becoming a licensed developer for the Nintendo platform,” he said. “And we have a legacy of supporting that type of development.”
So sorry, Bob. It’s just never going to happen. He already knows that – he ended his 100 day protest in January. Pelloni’s going homebrew all the way, and has already released a demo of Bob’s Game that you can access here.
