Nintendo announced their Game Builder Garage today, this is really a game development tool to teach people how to make games using a visual programming system that lets people connect different elements like actions on the controllers to character movement in the game.
Sony and Media Molecule have a similar idea with Dreams, another game creation toolkit for the PlayStation 4. The 400 lb gorilla in this genre is Roblox which not only lets people make games but has monetization built-in so that kids can help exploit other children and the company gets a cut of that which created a pretty gross system all the way down.
Like Dreams, it appears that you’ll only be able to distribute games made in Game Builder Garage to others who have Game Builder Garage, which rules out selling the games or porting them to other platforms.
There’s also a way to view the guts of other people’s games developed inside Game Builder Garage to learn from them, somebody at Nintendo recognizes the value of open source.
Game Builder Garage is $30 and out on June 11th for both the Nintendo Switch and the Lite. Regular Nintendo Switch users can optionally plug a USB mouse in to the dock to make it easier to use.
Leave a Reply