WiiWare was promoted as an avenue for developers with small budgets to release innovative, original, and smaller-scale games without the cost and risk of creating a title to be sold at retail (akin to Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Store).

[1] According to Nintendo, the "remarkable motion controls will give birth to fresh takes on established genres, as well as original ideas that currently exist only in developers' minds".

[10] In October 2007, Nintendo held a press conference in Japan revealing the first batch of major Japanese WiiWare games including My Pokémon Ranch, Dr. Mario Online Rx, and Square Enix's Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King.

Other Western developers releasing WiiWare games include Gameloft, Neko Entertainment, WayForward Technologies, Zoonami, Frozen Codebase and High Voltage Software.

Martin Hollis, founder of Zoonami, has accused Nintendo of inadequately promoting the WiiWare service: Other developers have criticised the 40MB size limit imposed on games on the service; the WiiWare version of Super Meat Boy was cancelled after the developer refused to compress the quality in order to pass under the size limit.

[20] Trent Oster of Beamdog, who released MDK2 on the service also criticised the file size limit, in addition to the lengthy certification process and the minimum sales requirement of 6,000 units before receiving any payment from Nintendo.