Despite showing the game on Wii U's show-reel at E3, the technical developers of Metro: Last Light don’t seem to think much the Wii U in terms of raw power. And with recent reviews and consumer concerns supporting that the Wii U doesn’t seem to be able to quite keep up with its older competitors in terms of load times and graphics, maybe they’re right.
“[The] Wii U has a horrible, slow CPU,” said Shishkovtsov to NowGamer.
Ouch. But when it comes to specifications, facts are facts, so it is up to the developer to decide whether or not they can make a game work well with their given hardware. 4A Games studio rep Huw Beynon agreed that the Wii U wasn’t looking like a good contender t to receive their game.
“We had an early look at it, we thought we could probably do it, but in terms of the impact we would make on the overall quality of the game – potentially to its detriment – we just figured it wasn’t worth pursuing at this time. It’s something we might return to. I really couldn’t make any promises, though.”
One has to wonder if developers of more technically intense games that simply need more power will snub their nose at the Wii U—and with good reason. No developer who cares about the quality of their game would want to have it run and look worse on another system.
That might not be all of Last Light’s problem though, as they recently experienced a scaling down of their team.
“We had an initial look at the Wii U, but given the size of the team and compared to where we were last time, just developing for the Playstation 3 is a significant addition.”
Nintendo certainly faces an uphill battle either way, as both consumers and developers decide whether or not to take their new system seriously.
