Wii U eShop lets indie developers set their own price and sales times, says Trine 2 developer

Nintendo's Wii U eShop offers an indie-friendly system that allows independent developers to set their own prices and determine when they have sales, Trine 2: Director's Cut developer Frozenbyte's marketing manager Mikael Haveri told IGN.

According to Haveri, the eShop operates in a similar manner to both Steam and Apple's Appstore, offering developers a level of freedom when distributing their games digitally.

"That's what we love about the new eShop," said Haveri. "We have the power to price our products as we please, with just some basic guidelines from the big guys. The step to this is purely from Nintendo's side and they clearly see that [their] previous installments have not been up to par. We can set our own pricing and actually continuing on that by setting our own sales whenever we want. It is very close to what Apple and Steam are doing at the moment, and very indie friendly."

Haveri adds that Nintendo don't demand basic payments from developers who issue patches on their games - an issue previously made public by Fez developer Polytron, stating Microsoft charged tens of thousands of dollars for updates to Xbox Live Arcade titles following a first, free patch update for developers.

"They have pushed away all of the old methods that have been established before," Haveri explained. "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."

"Nintendo messed up the worst last time around," Haveri said of the company's earlier digital distribution attempts. "Now they really know that they have to make a huge improvement to get back into the game. What I have seen and heard so far is amazing and it's definitely going in the right direction as far as small developers are concerned."

The Nintendo Wii U eShop launched this weekend with 23 titles available for online purchase, including New Super Mario Bros. U and Assassin's Creed 3. The eShop includes a separate section for indie titles, such as Chasing Aurora, Little Inferno, Mighty Switch Force! Hyper Drive Edition, Nano Assault Neo and Trine 2: Director's Cut.