Lanning happy to bring Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty to Wii U, not worried about install base
Coming from a GamesBeat interview with Lorne Lanning...
We’re self-publishing. With Sony that’s a breeze. With Steam it’s a breeze. With Microsoft it’s not a breeze. With Nintendo, something’s going to happen there shortly. Even on the Wii U, though, how many people did buy it? It’s kind of how we looked at Vita in the Christmas of 2012. We did Stranger HD on Vita, and the publishers were kind of snubbing Vita at the time, because there wasn’t enough installed base to move their dial. We said, yeah, but that small base is pretty passionate. They invested and they want good experiences that are designed to maximize that control scheme. Why don’t we spend a little more time and attention – because we’re small and we can – and a result we took number two in the U.S. and number one in Europe that Christmas on Vita.
That’s not selling millions of units, but the way we’re looking at it, it gets us into a pool of users on a specific device, of which so far we’ve had zero on Nintendo. We’ve had zero brand visibility on Nintendo since day one. We never built for Nintendo. Today, we’re looking at it and we say, “We’ll get over to Wii U. As a business model it might not completely make sense, but we want to get to work on Nintendo, get to self-publishing on Nintendo. Everything’s a new store. Everything’s more shelf space. We’re trying to get the brand across that as widely as possible.
We’re self-publishing. With Sony that’s a breeze. With Steam it’s a breeze. With Microsoft it’s not a breeze. With Nintendo, something’s going to happen there shortly. Even on the Wii U, though, how many people did buy it? It’s kind of how we looked at Vita in the Christmas of 2012. We did Stranger HD on Vita, and the publishers were kind of snubbing Vita at the time, because there wasn’t enough installed base to move their dial. We said, yeah, but that small base is pretty passionate. They invested and they want good experiences that are designed to maximize that control scheme. Why don’t we spend a little more time and attention – because we’re small and we can – and a result we took number two in the U.S. and number one in Europe that Christmas on Vita.
That’s not selling millions of units, but the way we’re looking at it, it gets us into a pool of users on a specific device, of which so far we’ve had zero on Nintendo. We’ve had zero brand visibility on Nintendo since day one. We never built for Nintendo. Today, we’re looking at it and we say, “We’ll get over to Wii U. As a business model it might not completely make sense, but we want to get to work on Nintendo, get to self-publishing on Nintendo. Everything’s a new store. Everything’s more shelf space. We’re trying to get the brand across that as widely as possible.
