Koji Igarashi recently had an interview with IGN wherein he discussed among other things, that the Wii U version of the game may not happen. The game is coming out in 2018 and the Wii U will be pretty much done by 2017, and given that the Wii U version is being done externally as well due to the engine not being fully compatible, it might not be worth it to continue. That said, he may have implied the game’s port for Nintendo might be moved from the Wii U to the upcoming NX.
“Yeah, it’s a very complicated problem. The reality is this: As timelines move on, certain pieces of hardware become irrelevant. Sometimes new pieces of hardware come out that make you think about what is the right strategy. And as a creator, usually you want to make stuff for the new hardware. That’s the reality.”
“However, this was a game that was backed by people, and we made promises to listen to them. They’re the people that gave us life so to speak. Any sort of change that we do or are considering that goes outside the scope of the promises we’ve made must be done with lots of explanation, must be done with lots of care, and must be done with lots of back and forth with them to see what options we have. We must listen to them at the end of the day, and we have made promises.”
“Unfortunately, some of those don’t make as much sense anymore as they did before, and that’s also reality. So you’re in a very difficult position, and at the end of the day, if you’re going to go in one certain direction, you want to make sure that you have support from them.”
“But so far we’ve, I think, been incredibly transparent through all the things that have happened with our backers, and they have been very supportive. So I’m hoping that if there is going to be a difficult decision some day, and we don’t know, that we’re able to have that conversation. If they say they don’t get it, well that’s where we’re at. And if they say they do get it, well then, we’ll be able to do things that are maybe more interesting. We’ll see.
This wouldn’t be a bad thing necessarily as most Nintendo gamers will have moved on to the NX and the NX will most likely be able to natively run unreal engine 4, thereby making an NX port inherently superior to a Wii U port. I backed the game on kickstarter and would love an NX version.