Bringing in the Ringers

Nintendo might have stumbled onto a pretty obvious solution for the inherent problems with user-generated content in an open, unregulated marketplace.  It is obviously too early to tell but the idea of taking small-time but proven dev teams and sticking them into the platform’s distribution system does have a simple elegance to it.  The consumer gets an ostensibly superior product regularly delivered and highlighted for them and the third-parties get name recognition and wider platform for their work.  Granted, it does undermine the ballyhooed democratic process the genre is built on, but at some point, if that doesn’t produce easily-recognized quality output, perhaps its a bit overrated.