Nintendolife is reporting that Nintendo is looking into an early-access program on the Wii U and 3DS eShop. Steam's early-access and Greenlight programs allow gamers to fund projects they are interested in, by buying an early (usually pre-alpha) build of the game at reduced cost.
While this idea worries me a bit, it could actually work better with Nintendo than it does on Steam. Steam's early-access is notoriously plagued by projects that never get finished, or pretentious indie studios that fold when it becomes clear the developers have no idea what they're doing. Nintendo's historically tight quality control could make an eShop early-access program beneficial to both the customer and the developer.
Source: Nintendolife
