Konami’s follow up to the 3rd person action spin off of Castlevania won’t see a Wii U release, Eurogamer confirmed today.
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2’s lack of a port over to Nintendo’s console is the result of budgetary concerns. According to Producer Dave Cox in an interview with Eurogamer:
"The reason why we are developing it on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 is simply because that's the amount of people we got. If we want to do a Wii U conversion, that's another 20 people. We just don't have the resources or the budget to do it.”
It could be argued that this cost would justify itself if Konami had confidence in the platform’s install base, that there were enough potential users around to recoup the cost. In the worst possible outcome, they might have concerns over the quality of the game itself and it’s sales potential.
What’s potentially troubling is that, according to some reviewers on twitter, they’re receiving their pre-release copies on the day of the embargo. That doesn’t suggest a whole lot of confidence on Konami’s part. Maybe that’s an extension and confirmation of suggestions that Konami’s PR being generally unreliable and seemingly incapable of performing what’s in their job description. That’s not to suggest total incompetence, more that the structure of how that company runs might not lend itself to easily getting content to the press in time.
Or the game’s just bad and they’re limiting the financial damage by not porting it and making it difficult to review ahead of time. Maybe Konami’s PR team are devious marketing geniuses.
