Crystal Dynamics' Tomb Raider reboot is coming later this year, as is the Wii U. But they won't be coming together, says community manager Meagan Marie. Even though Nintendo finally has a system with enough power for HD graphics, Crystal Dynamics plans to stick to their original plan of bringing the reboot to the PS3 and Xbox 360.
"When we started developing the game we made a conscious decision that it was all about building the game for a platform and making sure the game was specific to that platform," Marie writes in a FAQ on the reboot.
"Given that we’ve been working on the game quite a while before Wii U was announced I think it would not be right to try and port it across. If we started building a game for the Wii U we would build it very differently and we would build it with unique functionality."
Maybe we'll see something else with Lara in it later on for the Wii U. Would you want that? Or would you rather they just do a straight across port with no use of the Wii U's touch and motion-sensing functionality?
Tomb Raider Reboot Won't Be Coming To Wii U [G4TV]
Dale North is Destructoid's Editor-In-Chief, a founding editor, and specialist in Japanese gaming. An accomplished musician, Dale was reporting from Japan during the earthquakes of 2011. Luckily, he got the fuck out alive and is home in America now with his wife and beloved corgi, Einstein. Dale is also a co-founder of Destructoid's sister anime site
Japanator. Likes Corgis, Sega Saturn, PSP, iPhone, Photographic tools.
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Contest:
9:00 PM on 01.26.2012
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Considering Underworld blew, this might not be so bad.
If they go for improving the hardware immensely, the Wii U will get inferior ports or none at all. If Sony and MS slow down to keep costs low the Wii U will be in a great position to hang around and get near equal support.
I will add that the thing they're not saying is that they're probably not persuing the Wii U since it has a non-existent install base (duh!). There's no reason to risk any resources on such a port when you have two consoles that give you access to 100+ million potential customers. Make the best game possible on what you planned rather than adding more to your already fast approaching deadline.
At least when when Ubi not filling up the DS lineup with shovelware, anyway.
I can't imagine a port for Tomb Raider on Wii U being that hard considering its a pretty friendly platform for developers, the only difference is they'd have to change some things for the controller and they'd be things I'd welcome, like shifting HUD info and adding the ability to notate maps on the controller's screen. That can't be THAT hard to implement.
That said, if developers DO wise up and just decide to give the wiiU a bunch of straight up 360/PS3 ports, at least there will be a solid library at launch.
And yet it's coming to three platforms as of right this moment, not one. Is every single one of those a completely unique build, or is there one master version that gets tweaked for the particular platform? I fail to see where Wii U is some special snowflake, especially since part of the reason for its existence is to allow easy porting from current gen hardware.
Maybe I'll have to get a copy of each to try out. I bet I'm not the only one, they've struck gold here. Screw DLC, get gamers excited to buy multiple copies of the same game for all those AMAZING unique features. I'll be getting this for PC, Mac and PS3. I might even by an Xbox, just to get the set. Unique features ahoy!
- On Xbox 360, she'll wear green pants that highlight her ass.
- On Playstation 3, She'll wear blue pants that highlight her ass.
- On PC, there'll be a nude mod released within minutes.
The wii u will have just launched, or will launch around the time of this game, the installed user base will be small and is guaranteed to not turn a fraction of the profit the other two established platforms will.
It is not the job of 3rd parties to help drive sales of new hardware, that is Nintendo's job, if they want 3rd party help in this, then they need to provide incentives to warrant the cost of development which will only be able to reach an extremely limited user base.
Nintendo wanted to jump the shark and release a new console out of sync with all the others, this is the problem they are going to face more and more, convincing Devs to focus on the one platform that will have the minority installed user base for a number of years to come.
Not like you have too many choices since Uncharted is a Sony exclusive anyway.
"I fail to see where Wii U is some special snowflake"
- The Wii U has no user base yet to judge whether it's worth the risk
- The Wii U has that touch screen thing and they said they would not want to make use of that and right now they don't plan to which is fair enough. Sure they don't HAVE to, but that makes that screen and the concept of the Wii U redundant. Oh and also the prior point; it's not worth gambling on thinking of at the moment.
- Nobody even knows how the Wii U is going to control properly. You've got one tablet only, so how are you going to play multiplayer games? With the Wii Remote? So is that the main form of control? Maybe these guys don't want to redesign their Tomb Raider game around waggle controls? Maybe by designing it for a particular format, they mean the designed it for keyboard and controllers, not the Wii Remote again. As for the touchscreen controller, there's no way of knowing how to use that effectively yet.
"considering its a pretty friendly platform for developers"
You of course know that based on... oh, nothing?
I mean seriously they could have a lunch day game when gamers are at their biggest impulse buys.
I had $600 in my pocket when I bought my wii and I had $0 left when the next day started, I even bought red steel which was ok at best.
But then again I have never really been impressed by the tomb raider series in general, so it is really not much of a loss here for me.
Just add the ability to play it completely on the controller's screen while someone else is watching TV like they did for the New Super Mario Bros Mii demo and like what the Darksiders team did with 2 lines of code and five minutes. Having the ability to play the game fully on the controller's screen should be enough of an enhancement to make the port viable.
"Having the ability to play the game fully on the controller's screen should be enough of an enhancement to make the port viable."
... erm, are you kidding me? So the Wii U pretending to be a portable game device is reason enough for anyone to want to port their game over ever? LOLOLOLOL!
Sure, they're saying "oh well, the Wii-U was announced after the game already was well into production, but Dale even says it here: They can forego the tablet screens and just put the game out, no one should care as long as it plays well and looks great.
KS: “When we started developing the game we made a conscious decision that it was all about building the game for a platform and making sure the game was specific to that platform.”
KS: “I used to be a big PC fan and I appreciate that individuals want to play with a mouse and keyboard. We’ve already started talking about the PC and keyboard layout, so yes, our goal working on the PC version is to allow for play with the controller or keyboard and mouse.”
Will there be a Mac version of Tomb Raider?
"We’re in the middle of discussions with a company looking to do just that. I’d love to be able to see it day and date with the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC release, but there is a technological aspect to it as well that we would need to achieve. I want a Mac version because I love my Mac.”
It looks like they expect to be able to release the game on the Mac at the same time as on the other systems, even though they have not started on that version yet. If they are building the game to be specific to each platform, then this does not follow. What is specific for the 360 version that is different from the PS3 version and vice versa? If there is no difference between the existing versions, then there should not have to be a difference for the Wii U version either. If they really want a difference that badly, they can simply allow it to be played on the controller’s screen. Why are they willing to work through the technological aspects to get the game made for the Mac and include different control options for the PC, but are unwilling to make the game for the Wii U that has been touted as being easy to port to from the 360 and already has a suitable control scheme? Also, when they say that they are building the game for a platform, are they referring to all the builds as one platform? That doesn’t seem right. If they consider each build its own platform then, according to their excuse, each build will have features that are specific to their respective platforms. If there turns out to be no difference between the versions of the game, then consider this excuse to simply be a lie. The only reason there is no Wii U release is because there is no love for it.
"It looks like they expect to be able to release the game on the Mac at the same time as on the other systems, even though they have not started on that version yet."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't they say in the exact same quote that they are trying to get ANOTHER company to do it for them? Isn't it quite a bit different to outsourcing their game to be put through to Mac users than spending their own time and resources getting it on the Wii U?
All this talk about just being able to play on the Wii U's controller and not make any use of its functionality for the sake of games being ported already says a lot about how useless the controller can be. The Wii U isn't too different to this generation of consoles apart from that controller, so you would think people wanted the developers to ya know, make use of it? Otherwise what's the point in buying it over a potentially cheaper 360 or PS3?
Two consoles that don't have this issue that the developer up there brought up?
I kind of respect the developers for not wanting to do a mere port on the Wii U but first consider how they would make use of the unique hardware first. The fact is, Nintendo's trick this time is the additional Wii U controller and touch controls, and if we're saying developers shouldn't make use of that, Nintendo HAS nothing to compete with the 360 and PS3. Which both have the third parties already under their wing, Kinect and Move/Vita functionality and superior online capabilities... and we don't even know what they're going to pull out of their hat for the NEXT generation of consoles.
That's me jumping the gun with the online capabilities, but considering it's Nintendo history has told me to assume the worst with their take on online play.
To say a straight port is justifiable just because you can play it on a seperate screen sucks. That's Nintendo's trump card? You're saying that developers should just port games over and ignore the USP of the Wii U just to get the game on a smaller screen? Fail already.
I'm guessing all the people who have purchased big screen TVs, surround sound systems to play their games on are going to be really thrilled to buy a Wii U so they can ignore their gaming set up so they can play Tomb Raider whilst taking a shit. Smart.