In the last 15 years or so, there has been a boom in the home audio industry brought about by the reduced pricing in high quality recording equipment and affordable computer hardware and software. Every middle class kid and their brother can write, record and market their songs, interviews, monologues, etc.

This has been true of the PC gaming industry as well. There are plenty of powerful open source or cheap tools available for the creation of digital game content. This has resulted in a vibrant freeware and shareware game culture on the web. Modding tools are also prevalent and have served as springboards for many a fledgling artist, programmer, level designer into the universe of Triple-A game production.

This has not been the case for consoles so much, however. The major players have kept a lid on console development through proprietary "development kits" that cost a bundle and have steep learning curves. Is Nintendo bucking this trend with its recently announced WiiWare?

It's hard to say yet. But it certainly looks like Nintendo wants to marry some of the best ideas of the otherwise ill-conceived Phantom to its tremendous success with the accessible Wii.

They plan to launch Wiiware (a development kit for the Wii) in early 2008. Wannabe Wii developers will be able to purchase the kit through the Wii's elegant shopping channel. Then, reportedly, said developers will be able to create game content that can be uploaded back to the channel for others to purchase and play with.

Not many details are available yet. For example, how difficult will the tools be to learn? What kinds of licensing are available? How much does the kit cost? Etc. At least on the surface, however, this sounds like a step in the right direction.