‘Metro: Last Light’ for Wii U dropped due to quality issues

By: Jason McCarthy

  |   December 14th, 2012   |  

Uncategorized

THQ representative concedes work on a Wii U version of Metro: Last Light started, but was cancelled quite early on in development.

There are a number of games that are skipping Nintendo’s first-ever HD console, but there has hardly been any game that has received as much spotlight as Metro: Last Light for not being developed for the new console.

The head of global communications at THQ and studio representative for 4A Games Huw Benyon has, however, revealed during an interview with Spong that the studio had put some serious thought into a Wii U iteration of the survival horror first-person shooter and even started working on it.

However, it was realised fairly early on by the developer as the publisher that bringing the game to Wii U is not going to work and therefore closed the lid on it.

“Our look at the Wii U extended to a very early look at some very early kits. We… we did some work on it, but we made a decision fairly early on that we weren’t going to commit further resource to it,” Benyon said. “So yeah, we didn’t go too far.”

Benyon did not exactly say why THQ had decided to cancel the Wii U version of Metro: Last Light, and if the company plans on reconsidering it in the future.

During an interview with Now Gamer last month, the chief technical officer at 4A Games Oles Shishkovtsov had been pretty vocal, though not necessarily accurate, while explaining why the game was not coming on Wii U.

According to him, Nintendo’s next-generation console has a “horrible, slow CPU,” something that makes the machine incapable of delivering the quality experience that the studio is aiming at.

Benyon had also reiterated the sentiments of his colleague at that time, stating that the studio could not justify the effort required to develop the game for Wii U, while adding that even though the team had initially thought that it was possible to port the game to Nintendo’s dual-screen gaming console, but it did not take them long to realise that the overall quality of the game was being brought down.

The THQ executive did address the rumour that Metro: Last Light was not coming to Wii U because of its alleged horrible and slow CPU.

“Take any of the comments you’ve seen attributed with a pinch of salt,” Benyon said. “It’s certainly not been based on any kind of analysis of final hardware.”

For a publisher that has been facing financial problems for more than a year now and struggling to stay afloat in the rapidly changing gaming industry, the decision to not spend resources on a game to bring it to a console with a relatively small install base would surely not have come with much difficulty.