A friend said since my mind is set for working with Nintendo, it's better not making PC games as I'm doing now with C++/Win32/OpenGL. He recommended to look at the homebrew kits for making games on the Nintendo, all in hopes to impress the interviewer later on with actual console experience, starting with the GBA or what not. I feel it doesn't matter, but given that consoles and PCs are two different worlds, I thought I'd get your opinion.

To me it doesn't matter.

However, you can actually make indie games for the Wii U, using Unity. It may cost up to $3000 for a Wii U development kit, though.

Thanks for the thoughts.

More was written about it here, directly from Nintendo's indie liaison rather than hearsay through a rewritten article about what a different news reporter overheard during E3.

Different people define "indie" very differently.

In the business environment, "indie" means a professionally organized group of people, with legal agreements forming a proper business entity, with contracts to ensure all rights are assigned to the entity. It means a business that is independent of existing major corporate ties.

For lay people, "indie" often means teenagers in a basement, or hobby development lasting for years as an evening project. Unfortunately for these people, their projects are very frequently legally tainted. Without an agreement generally ownership is joint and requires agreement by all parties, possibly even if their contribution was nothing more than a single email. Often this type of indie groups do not have proper legal contracts to clearly own all the IP rights. Often there are code snippets from the web without attribution or rights disclaimers, or there are images and textures and models and audio from unknown sources or with improper written licenses. Almost always you find multiple developers working together without a written collaboration agreement. Precisely who owns the product, and can you prove it if challenged? Which specific people have a right to sell it, or must the agreement get signatures from everybody? Which specific people have a right to license it? Do you have a legally enforceable way to divide revenue, or to retain revenue? How are taxes handled? Who owns derivative works? What happens when someone leaves? Is separate usage by contributors permitted? How will disagreements be resolved? And on and on.

While the second group absolutely can create fun games, it is such a legal morass that companies don't want to touch them.

Nintendo works with the first kind of indie.

The link (same as above) is pretty clear on the requirements. You must be a registered Nintendo developer. You must have a registered company, either that you own or that you work for. You must have game development experience, but the article doesn't say if that must be professional experience; in the past, employment at an experienced studio was a requirement. You must have the resources (read:money) to bring a game to completion. You must be able to secure all their property, both software and hardware, but according to the article they no longer strictly require a secure office environment as part of the policy, yet I don't expect a shared dorm room would satisfy that requirement.

The Unity3D plugins for Nintendo system are not free and require Unity Pro, so you are in to the investment several thousand dollars just for that, and you need a paid copy for everyone doing development on it. You also will find yourself in need of devkit hardware and other equipment, which is also not inexpensive. One aspect of getting Nintendo to talk with you is the resources: do you have the several thousand dollars to get the equipment, the money for legal costs for trademarks and such, the significant funds for certification tests, the money for your own QA groups, the money for ESRB certifications, and so on?

The first group of "indie" looks at a $5000 or $20000 or even $100000 to entry as a cost of doing business that will be recouped through sales. The second group of indie often sees it as an unfair requirement against their creative powers.

Make sure you are in the correct "indie" group.