Dead Island: Riptide publisher explains Wii U absence
UPDATE: Techland says the decision to not release Dead Island: Riptide on Wii U has nothing to do with the technical capabilities of the game's engine.
Update: A Techland representative has told GameSpot that Dead Island: Riptide's engine would not need to be rewritten or adapted to run on the Wii U and that the decision to not release the game on the Wii U was not down to the engine's capabilities.
"Wii U compatibility was coded, created, and tested months ago, back in 2012. There's no 'rewriting' needed to make it work on Nintendo's latest console. So the bottom line is that there were no plans to create a Wii U version but that decision had nothing to do with Chrome Engine's inability to run on that platform," said Techland.
Original Story: Current-gen open-world FPS Dead Island: Riptide won't be coming to the Wii U, publisher Deep Silver has said.
Speaking in an interview with Digital Spy, creative producer Alexander Toplansky said the development team at Techland would have either rebuilt the engine to work on Nintendo's latest hardware or simply ported the game. "One of the opportunities we had for Riptide was to continue the development of the engine, and really improve it and make a lot of refinements," said Toplansky.
"The things that are required to bring something to a new platform, you need to either really get to be integrating it deep into the engine, or you've got to [do] a port."
"Neither one of those was a satisfactory outcome for us, so we decided to do what we got platform-wise and just make sure that we can deliver the best experience we can."
Toplansky also confirmed that the studio wasn't actively planning to support the Wii U in the future, but wouldn't rule out the idea completely. "It's not something I would categorically rule out, but it's not something that's planned," he said.
Dead Island: Riptide is being released for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC on April 26 in Europe and on April 23 in North America.
The original Dead Island has now sold over 5 million copies since its launch in 2011, Deep Silver parent company Koch Media announced in February.
"While others focus on ever-increasing development budgets and driving brand messages via ballooning marketing expenditures, Deep Silver stands for hitting the zeitgeist, innovation and fresh gameplay," said Koch Media CEO Klemens Kundratitz at the time.
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