Various industry figures have come out in support of Peter Moore's claims that review scores don't impact the success of Wii games. One developer told Eurogamer that how a Wii game does is contingent entirely upon marketing, calling Wii games "pure risk." "A lot of these games that you think are the perfect game for Wii don't sell because companies don't have the money to market them," the developer said. "Whereas Nintendo is spending gazillions of dollars marketing their games."

Michael Pachter suggested that review scores aren't important because many Wii owners don't read reviews. ""I think that Metacritic scores are irrelevant for people who don't look at them - how's that for obvious?" Pachter said. "While there are many Wii owners who are hardcore and who care very much about scores, there are many - perhaps half - who are quite casual, and wouldn't know Metacritic if it fell on them." He offered games like Carnival Games and Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum as examples of successful titles with little critical acclaim.

However, 2D Boy's Kyle Gabler offers an instance in which Metacritic scores and reviews do make a difference: indie games, like his own World of Goo, which happens to be the third highest-rated game on Wii. He compares mainstream games to Will Smith movies, which draw audiences without reviews.

"But for indie guys like us, Metacritic and review scores matter a lot," Gabler said. "In fact we link directly to them from our web site. So does Steam. It makes a lot of sense - potential players don't feel comfortable dishing out cash for some random unknown indie game without an aggregate thumbs-up from solid reviewers."

If you were one of the many recruits in last year's war on restrictive, invasive DRM, you may want to check out a recent article on Gamasutra that features opinions on PC gaming piracy protection (that's a mouthful) from a number of gaming industry movers and shakers.

The general sentiment of these interviewees is that DRM is extremely ineffective when it comes to preventing piracy, and that developers should either come up with alternate ways of ensuring the retail product is more valuable than the pirated product, or determine a different way to make money altogether (such as micro-transactions). For interesting insight from fine folks like 2D Boy's Ron Carmel and Stardock's Brad Wardell, we highly suggest checking out the full article.

Hot on the heels of moving into the Xbox Live Arcade market, online retailer Amazon has started offering Wiiware games for purchase, as spotted by a savvy shopper on NeoGAF. The first one spotted in the wild is 2D Boy's puzzler World of Goo.

Though discounts were a big selling point for the XBLA portion of Amazon's e-storefront, this first offering is at the full $15 price tag. Here's hoping that's not the case for all Wii releases. This isn't how we want to buy our games, but we could definitely be lured in by the prospect of saving a few bucks.

Update: Just like with the XBLA codes, there are no plans to sell WiiWare codes through Amazon's UK branch, reports CasualGaming.biz.

Today would be an incredible day on the Japanese Wii Shop even if World of Goo weren't debuting. In addition to one of the best games on Wii, the Virtual Console is updated with four high-quality titles. In fact, Phantasy Star alone would ensure that today was a winner. It's hard to imagine a better deal than Phantasy Star for just 600 Wii Points.

Other VC games available in Japan today include Castlevania 3 (awesome), the PC Engine version of the NES Ninja Gaiden (quite the curiosity!) and an arcade rail shooter from Namco Bandai. The other WiiWare game, and basically the only unknown property, is Hajitte! Block Rush, which looks like a radial Breakout in which the paddle is in the middle of the screen. We'd try that!

Virtual Console:

• Akumajou Densetsu (Castlevania 3) (Famicom, 1 player, 500 Wii Points)
• Phantasy Star (Master System, 1 player, 600 Wii Points)
• Ninja Ryukenden (Ninja Gaiden) (PC Engine, 1 player, 600 Wii Points)
• Starblade (Arcade, 1 player, 800 Wii Points)

WiiWare:

• Hajitte! Block Rush (1 player, 500 Wii Points)
  
• World of Goo (1-4 players, 1,500 Wii Points)

There's a wealth of indie-related gaming panels and goings on at SXSW this year, ranging from the previous "Games By The People, For The People" panel, the GameSalad folks, and the retro-cool Get Outta My Face arcade cabinet. Heck, there's even a company that wants to bring back Hypercard stack games. So we went back for more indie gaming panel goodness, just because we could.

This was a panel by the game developers this time, rather than the people who run the companies ... so what did we learn? A lot of the same from the previous panel. Sadly Jonathan Blow couldn't make it, and was replaced by the above inflatable doll with the Freddie Mercury mug. Although covering his absence nicely were panelists Kellee Santiago from thatgamecompany, John Baez of The Behemoth, Ron Carmel of 2D BOY, and Joel DeYoung from Hothead Games who moderated. Check out the highlights after the break.

Independent game developer 2D Boy has begun to detail the early days of development for World of Goo. In a recent blog post (the first of seven), the team revealed its original version of what would eventually become the award-winning title. One week into development, 2D Boy had a basic idea of what to expect: A small game with simple physics and collision detection ... and which sported no music or animation at all.

If a screenshot (pictured above) of 2D Boy's creativity coming to fruition isn't enough, the developer has also made the original version of the game available to download -- for free. 2D Boy warns players that the 2006 version "feels like you're dragging balls inside a jar of honey" and has stability issues but it's a great extra for fans of the final product. Also, it guest stars Chairry ... so it captured our Pee-Wee's Playhouse loving hearts immediately.

Update: Part two of the feature, which includes a newer version of the 2006 build to download, is also available.

Another Monday means another Nintendo Channel update, and this week we've got a boatload of new video content, as well as some new DS content to love. On the demo side, there are two piping hot samples, one of which is Personal Trainer, and the other TrackMania DS. Check the full list of demos after the break.

On the video side, there's plenty of new content to watch. You can check out some footage from Pokemon Platinum, as well a nice developer chat with the folks behind World of Goo, and some footage from Sega titles House of the Dead: Overkill and MadWorld.

All weekend long, Steam is selling 2D Boy's critically acclaimed (and Joystiq-approved) World of Goo for $5, which is 75% off the normal going rate. Knowing that, anyone connected to Steam should, at the very minimum, give the demo a test drive.

Truthfully, we can say that World of Goo offers at least $5 in sticky, sticky fun. For that price, there's really no way one could justify Goo piracy.

Earlier this month, a Japanese trademark for World of Goo was spotted, registered by Nintendo of Japan. This lead to conjecture that Nintendo would publish the indie WiiWare hit in that territory. Nintendo's Tom Prata has kindly confirmed the speculation, telling us that "Nintendo will distribute World of Goo for WiiWare in Japan starting in the second quarter of 2009."

The company certainly seems taken with the game, which is now pretty much the poster child for WiiWare. At the DICE summit, 2D Boy's Kyle Gabler even joined Prata onstage for a presentation about Nintendo's interest in putting more indie games on WiiWare and DSiWare.

In the latest edition of Touch Ruminations, former DS and Wii Fanboy Lead David Hinkle talks about how lousy Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop looks and why the Wii needs to be taken more seriously. Basically, he just rants about stuff. The opinions expressed here belong to the author and don't necessarily reflect those of Joystiq, Weblogs Inc. or its affiliates.

You've seen it, right? Horrible, I know. How does something like this even happen? I don't have all of the answers, but being an individual that has worked in the Wii trenches for years now, I can tell you one thing: this isn't helping the Wii to get the respect it deserves.

Update: Tom Prata, Nintendo's senior director of project development, said that "Nintendo will distribute World of Goo for WiiWare in Japan starting in the second quarter of 2009." Confirmed!

Siliconera found a new Japanese trademark registration, for something called ... hmm, "World of Goo?" Oh, wait, that's probably just that WiiWare game, World of Goo, that came out in other territories last year and was loved by all. 2D Boy's puzzle masterpiece has yet to hit Japan, but it could soon, judging by this registration. Surprisingly, Nintendo is the registering company, meaning that it may choose to publish World of Goo in Japan. That's a testament to Nintendo's high estimation of the game's quality belief that it will sell!

World of Goo isn't the first Western WiiWare game from a smaller developer to be picked up by a huge publisher for Japanese release. Square Enix released Frontier Developments' LostWinds in December.

We nearly reached for the Tums whilst perusing this story -- it's been so long since we've heard any heartwarming news regarding the gaming industry that we confused the sensation with a mild case of heartburn. A representative from Brighter Minds Media, the publisher behind last year's highly lauded slime-flinging puzzler World of Goo, recently announced that the publisher would not be laying off any of its employees -- despite the fact that the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last week. Though they're going through what sounds like a fairly radical "reorganization", they won't be extending the already depressingly long gaming industry bread line. Good form, Brighter Minds.

GameDaily BIZ has learned that family-friendly publisher, Brighter Minds, filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy on January 28. Chapter 11 bankruptcy allows the publisher to remain in control of its business as it makes organizational changes, unlike chapter 7, which would mean a complete liquidation of its assets. In July 2008, Brighter Minds launched its own online games portal, BeanstalkGames.com.

Recently the Ohio-based company published the critically acclaimed and award-winning World of Goo from developer 2D Boy. Winner of the IGF award for Design Innovation and Technical Excellence, World of Goo recently made NPD Top 10 sales list for the week ending January 17. The NPD listing was a surprise, considering World of Goo designer Ron Carmel revealed the game to have staggering 90% piracy rate in November. Those damn dirty pirates!

In an open letter posted on Kotaku as part of their series of "Welcome to the Family" letters, Cammie Dunaway gave one of the lengthiest statements we've seen from the recently-hired executive vice president of sales and marketing. The letter is directed at all the new Wii owners who have joined the fold since the holidays, and lays out the attractive features of the Wii in a manner appropriate for a new gamer. Although fundamentally, we're not sure how many expanded audience members are reading gaming blogs.

It's quite interesting to see what Nintendo is pitching to new gamers these days -- downloadable games are given a big push (World of Goo is now enough of a genuine hit to be the face of WiiWare, apparently!), as is Mario Kart Wii. Dunaway classifies the massively popular Mario Kart Wii as a "bridge game" that "really leads in two directions: not just from simple-to-more-involving, but also acting like a link between new gamers and veteran ones."