Gearbox unable to come up with cool ideas for it
Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford has said that Borderlands 2 wouldn’t be coming to Wii U, due to an inability to exploit the GamePad in some sort of Earth-shattering way. In contrast, the studio has plenty of ideas for Aliens: Colonial Marines.
“We get asked if there is going to be a Wii U version of Borderlands, and the reason why there’s not is because we couldn’t think of a natural, obvious, ‘OMG, I want that for what the Wii U brings to the table’ feature,” he told Games Master. “But with Aliens, the first thing we thought was ‘Holy shit, I can have a motion controller in my hands!’ When it’s there in my lap it feels like I’m part of the movie.”
I can’t say I’m a fan of this particular philosophy. As I said in the review for the gimmick-heavy Batman: Arkham City: Armored Edition, just because a system has features, that doesn’t mean they have to be used. This “all or nothing” mindset is what leads to messy games like Little Deviants happening, and I don’t like it.
There’s no shame in a Wii U game just being, y’know, a normal videogame. I thought that was the point of the GamePad having options for such things. I hope developers don’t lose sight of that.
