Another Body Blow For Wii U As Just Cause Studio Claims Devkit “Gathering Dust”
Every day seems to bring a new story about a multiformat title not making the cut for Nintendo Wii, or someone complaining about the lack of games. Now Nintendo Wii owners face more potential heartache as Avalanche Studios, the guys behind sandbox ’em up Just Cause, have said that they are reluctant to commit their resources to developing titles for the Wii sequel until it’s popularity increases. This is according to a translated Pressfire interview, thanks to The Escapist.
Nintendo claim to be making strides in terms of attracting third party support for their console, but in reality things have been hit and miss. For every decent port like Tekken Tag Tournament, or exclusive announcement like Bayonetta 2, there seems to be a cancellation like Madden, or a reneged promise like the Rayman debacle.
Some of the problems appear to be down to techy stuff, something which was demonstrated recently when Battlefield studio DICE let slip that the console is unable to run the Frostbite 3 engine, which is going to be a prominent development tool for future EA games. It is like the previous generation all over again, where developers were hamstrung by the limitations of the Wii and churned out technically inferior ports of games that were infinitely superior on the 360 or PS3.
The main thing said to be putting off developers like Avalanche, however, is said to be the poor sales performance of the console. “We actually had some development kits that just collected dust,” said Avalanche founder, Christofer Sundberg.” It’s a bit sad, because we wanted to do something. I think it is a cool platform, but right now it’s not just up to us. We want the game to reach as many as possible.” Sundberg’s criticism wasn’t just reserved for the Wii U. He expressed disappointment in Nintendo itself, whom he labelled as being difficult to communicate with. “Nintendo have from our point of view has always been difficult to reach. You never quite know who to contact.”
