Last week I was at GDC Europe and saw the presentation of Nintendos Web Framework.
It is basically a framework to make HTML5 games with javascript on the wiiu. I was skeptical because I did not expect much from a 2d canvas, after I tried out the canvas element in actual browsers. But I actually saw a very smooth full HD demo with more than 300 ( I guess ) 2D sprites on the screen. Also the framework is compatible with many third party javascript libraries. I had a short talk with the creator of the impact.js engine who made the wiiu demo. He said that the 2d canvas on the wiiu has a very good performance and is even faster than actual browser implementations. You cannot do webGL though.... ( I guess they focus on unity for 3d )

For me that sounds very promising and I have the impression that it became super easy to make a game for a nintendo console. ( which is probably a nice dream some of us always had )

For example: You could make the game in js... and if it looks good you can port it to the wiiu in no-time. ( and I really mean no-time )
Of course their dev-kit is still expensive but affordable if you have serious plans. They also said, that there are ways nintendo can support you if your financial power is limited. But they did not mention any details. Looks like you have to register and sign their NDA first to learn more.

Since this forum is full of javascript coders and game developers I though it is worth sharing ^^

https://wiiu-developers.nintendo.com/

Okay, that sounds freakin' cool. I'll be tracking that stuff.

Code: [Select]

I was skeptical because I did not expect much from a 2d canvas

I'm kind of surprised about that... You don't have to look far nowadays to find some great Canvas-based games. Performance IS pretty good. Things really moved along quickly, too.

^^ actually I also did already a fast gamejam title in the canvas which was running fine on phones. But I somehow always considered the canvas as slow... Maybe really an outdated way of thinking xD