The Wii U’s small userbase and twilight years means games that are brought to the console are often handled by an experienced port studio. Most of the Wii U’s indie game releases have gone this route and many have wondered if that will be the case for Yooka-Laylee as well, as UK publisher Team17 is now handling some of the development for the game.
The studio will be handling the Xbox One and PS4 versions of the game, while Playtonic Games themselves will handle development of the PC and Wii U version. Playtonic is ensuring the Wii U version is given the proper treatment here, so Nintendo fans should be pleased with this development.
MCV sat down with the team at Playtonic Games to ask why they’re handling the Wii U version internally:
Robinson: We naturally have so many backers who opted for Wii U. Because of the size of the team, we couldn’t take on all the consoles. You can imagine from a developer stand-point, that porting from PC to PS4 and Xbox One is slightly more straightforward than porting to Wii U.
I also think it feels right playing it on a Nintendo system to some people. But the other versions will be fantastic as well.
Stevenson: We wanted to make sure that Wii U gets the right attention. There is a lot of nostalgia around Banjo, Banjo heralds from Rare’s Nintendo’s days, and we are all massive Nintendo fans as well.
