PRESS RELEASE: Following the highly successful launch of myNotebook™ Nnooo is pleased to announce the development of myPostcards™ the second title in Nnooo’s new myLifeCollected™ range of lifestyle applications for Nintendo DSiWare™

myPostcards is a creativity application for the Nintendo DSi™ which allows users to take a photo, write a note and then share the created postcards with friends via email, traditional mail or even Facebook™. With over 50 different background themes and 12 stamps to apply users will be limited only by their imagination. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Matthew Sainsbury for ARN website. Below is the full interview which you can also read on their site.

Nic Watt, founder and creative director of games and application software developer, Nnooo, is on the cutting edge of the industry. The Independent Software Developer’s sales model is entirely around digital downloads for the iPhone, Nintendo Wii and DS. He speaks to MATTHEW SAINSBURY about the future of digital distribution and the broader gaming software industry.

Can you give me an overview of Nnooo and your background?

I’ve been in the industry for about 10 years now. I was working at Electronic Arts in London, and my partner got offered the chance to come to Australia, so we made the decision to move out here. It was at that point I sold some property I had in the UK, and decided to make the jump to running my own small games company.

It was around about the time that the small downloadable titles were starting to come to market. Microsoft had just launched Xbox Live Arcade, and I thought the future of these small downloadable games was quite exciting. Particularly from a small company point of view, it was something we could achieve.

What are the advantages of downloadable titles over a full retail release?

For us, the one thing I wanted to do was to make the games I wanted to make. When you work with a really big company, such as EA, that becomes very difficult, because you’ve got to go through so many different stages and there’s so many approval mechanisms. Quite often, the people higher up in the company have their own vision for the kinds of games they want to have made.

Also, the hard part of making a full retail game is it costs a lot of money – when you start up a new company, it’s very difficult industry for people to give you $5, $10 or $20 million to make a videogame unless you’ve done something like make a Halo or World or Warcraft in the past. Read the rest of this entry »

Dear Mr Atkinson,

I am writing to express my thoughts on the current situation of video game ratings in Australia. As the CEO and Creative Director of an Australia based video games company (currently situated in Sydney) I am somewhat saddened by the fact that Australia does not allow adults to purchase games which are available elsewhere in the world at a rating suitable for adult content. IE an R 18+ or similar rating.

It appears, to me, to be somewhat contradictory to allow both Television and Film to be rated against a wider range of ratings than Video Games are. As far as I am aware only people over the age of 18 are allowed to purchase R 18+ films and television products (DVD, Blue Ray etc) so why can this not be the same for games? We have a very robust video games retail service in Australia who already currently use the rating system to sell games to a wide range of people based on their age. Furthermore everyone in Australia is already familiar with this ratings system so providing a new R 18+ rating for games would not result in children or people under the age of 18 obtaining said products unless an adult purchased it for them (as adults can do currently with both Film and TV products). Read the rest of this entry »

Aussie-Nintendo recently reviewed myNotebook: Blue and gave us an amazing 8/10 You can read the review below or on Aussie-Nintendo.com (here).

Depending on your needs, myNotebook could be an essential purchase. Personally, having a digital notebook on the DSi just makes a lot of sense. I tend to take my DSi with me when I set out for my daily trips to Mars and back, but pen and paper? Yeah, not so much. It’s really something that should have been included with the system in the first place, and while Nintendo’s Flipnote Studio offers the basic functionality, this has a much better feel to it. Read the rest of this entry »

Nintendolife recently reviewed myNotebook: Blue and gave us a great 7/10. Below is the full review or you can read it on NintendoLife here (and add your comments to the already massive amount). Thanks again to NintendoLife for all the great work they have put in to support us and myNotebook.

Delivering what the DSi should’ve already had. Until now, Nnooo only released one arcade-like highscore game on WiiWare and DSiWare. And though one game is hardly enough to go by, we were still quite surprised to find out that their next project was not another game, but rather a simple application.
myNotebook pretty much does what the title implies – It gives you a virtual notebook consisting of 32 pages, on which you can leave all sorts of messages, notes, doodles and drawings. When you think about it now, it’s actually really weird that such a feature was not included on the DSi from the get-go. Read the rest of this entry »

Sydney, Dec 3 2009

PRESS RELEASE: Nnooo are pleased to announce that myNotebook: Blue™ has reached #3 in the US, UK, AU and CA DSiWare charts (making it currently the highest ranking paid for piece of software).

“We are so pleased that the consumer reception to myNotebook has been so high.” said Nic Watt, Creative Director, Nnooo “The myLifeCollected range of software was always a risky proposition and to see that we are creating something which appeals so strongly to Nintendo DSi users is a great achievement.” Read the rest of this entry »

Sydney, Nov 17, 2009

PRESS RELEASE: Nnooo are pleased to announce that myNotebook™ has been approved for release in both Europe and North America for Nintendo DSiWare™. The three different versions of myNotebook will launch on the following dates for 200 Nintendo DSi Points™:

myNotebook: Blue™ launches Friday 20th November in Europe, Australia and New Zealand and Monday 23rd November in the Americas.

myNotebook: Red™ launches Friday 4th December in Europe, Australia and New Zealand and Monday 7th December in the Americas.

myNotebook: Green™ launches Friday 18th December in Europe, Australia and New Zealand and Monday 21st December in the Americas.
myNotebook: Blue, Red and Green are the first releases in Nnooo’s new myLifeCollected range. A range of lifestyle applications for the Nintendo DSi™. Read the rest of this entry »

The following is the review Aussie-Nintendo.com gave Pop+ Solo. You can read the original post here.

It may not look like much, but Pop+ Solo – developed right here in Australia – is an incredibly addictive little game. The unique experience it offers manages to strike an interesting balance, as it can turn the player into a complete wreck whilst feeling relaxed at the same time.

A follow-up to Nnooo’s WiiWare title, Pop+ Solo expands upon the concept with a host of new game modes and options. Essentially, you’re poppin’ bubbles. However, frantically stabbing the touch screen at everything that floats on by won’t get you far; Pop is all about quick thinking and causing huge chain reactions. Grabbing hold of a bubble, you can pump it up, increasing its size by gently shaking up and down. Release, and it’ll explode, wiping out any bubbles of the same colour nearby. From there, you’re given a brief window of time to continue the combo in order to wrack up the big points and keep the all-important timer going.

Read the rest of this entry »

This weekend we were also reviewed by German Nintendo site nintendo-online.de who gave Pop a 7/10 and recommend it very highly. Read on for the full review (note to English speakers this review is in German). You can also read the original article here.

Zum Start von Nintendos Downloadservice auf der Wii im Mai des letzten Jahres erschienen nicht mehr als eine Hand voll Titel. Darunter war beispielsweise der „Final Fantasy“-Ableger „My Life as a King“, aber auch das außergewöhnliche „LostWinds“. Diesen beiden Titeln wurde folglich am meisten Aufmerksamkeit in den Medien gewidmet, denn das eine zeugte durch den großen Namen und das andere durch die außergewöhnliche Steuerung und dem Spielprinzip von Qualität. Etwas untergangen ist in den Folgewochen das süchtig-machende „Pop“, das mit „Pop+ Solo“ nun auch eine DSiWare-Umsetzung spendiert bekommen hat. Ob das Spiel auch auf dem Handheld Spaß macht, werdet ihr nun erfahren. Read the rest of this entry »

Nintendolife recently reviewed Pop+ Solo and gave us an amazing 9/10. Below is the full review or you can read it on NintendoLife here (and add your comments to the already massive amount). Thanks again to NintendoLife for all the great work they have put in to support us and Pop+ Solo.

Who would have thought that popping bubbles could be so much fun?

For the uninitiated, Pop Plus: Solo is an enhanced remake of the original game, Pop, released on the WiiWare service last year. The game garnered a reasonable amount of popularity and was widely praised for its simple yet addictive and eloquently executed gameplay. Over a year later the game has been rereleased on DSiWare with new additions and of course touch screen control. Read the rest of this entry »