For all those people who like to talk about alternative billing solutions, it’s remarkable how little people are talking about the Neverwinter Nights Online Store. Pretty much, only the guys at CorpNews are talking about it, and it took another game’s dev to point it out. That’s somewhat shocking, given that just two years ago NWN was the golden child of the fans and academia.

A little birdie told me that there’s a rift in Bioware, between those who are committed to the vision of NWN and those who see it as a nice experiment, but ultimately an expensive one that can’t compete with the revenue of just doing games like KOTOR and Jade Empire. Making tools good enough for player consumption is expensive. Supporting those tools is also expensive. Providing community support without the monthly fee MMOs use to pay for it has got to feel like an anchor to a small business, and as time passes, it’s got to become harder and harder for the bean counters to justify it with continued but dwindling NWN sales when they could be moving all of that talent to getting Jade Empire out the door.

I give Bioware a lot of credit for sticking with NWN, and trying to find a way to keep it self-sufficient. It sure would be nice to see more content in that store, though.