[Opinion] Gearbox’s reason for not putting Borderlands on Wii U is more baloney than this pseudo gaming-journalist can handle
November 26th, 2012 Posted in Features, Podcast Stories, Posted by Austin, Wii U
Well, I feel like I don’t want to take that anymore. At least for today.
Author: Austin
I wouldn’t be writing this feature if the response to last night’s quote from Gearbox regarding why Borderlands wouldn’t be coming to Wii U was different. If bloggers and pseudo-journalists had called them out and said “Hey, you know what, that reason makes absolutely no sense!”, I wouldn’t be furiously (okay, not furiously– that’s a word to make it seem more exciting) typing away right now, anxious to tell you all why this is a bunch of baloney.
For those who missed it, here’s the quote:
If you don’t think too hard, this makes sense. If there isn’t anything special to get out of a console, why bother bringing your game to it? That’s artistic integrity. Right?
Okay, sure. Let’s play along with this idea for a minute. Here’s a counter-question for you:
“What does the Xbox 360 ‘bring to the table’ in particular?”
Another question:
“What does the PS3 ‘bring to the table’ that the Xbox 360 DOESN’T?”
Answer: Noffin’. They’re just houses for the game because the hardware is powerful enough to run it, and the neat thing about this is that the Wii U is powerful enough to run it as well. They may have to work around the weaker processor, but given Nintendo’s history of abnormal console construction slash hardware design, I’m sure that they could find a way to shift “loads” and power “things” up and overclock “stuff” and whatever. I don’t really know anything about tech, but it’s doable.
So a more literal translation of the Gearbox quote would be something like this:
And guess what: That would have been fine. No one would have grabbed their pitchforks and called them “bullshitters” (as many people are) or “baloney-spewers” (as I prefer to call them), and they probably would have won some credibility points from people for just giving it to us straight.
It’s not fair of us to expect every publisher or developer to go after every market every day, and I wish people could just level with each other and cut the baloney.
Because if you don’t cut the baloney, it’s hard to make a tasty baloney sandwich of trust and wonder.
Or something.
Try his twitter!
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7 Responses to “[Opinion] Gearbox’s reason for not putting Borderlands on Wii U is more baloney than this pseudo gaming-journalist can handle”
By Patrick on Nov 26, 2012
Borderlands is best played in co-op. Playing split-screen co-op on every other console sucks.
There’s your feature.
That said, I totally get why developers don’t want to make ports of games that already came out months earlier.
By pie on Nov 26, 2012
Maybe they used this to test to see if people wanted Borderland 2 on Wii U, and now their gonna design the Game of the Year Edition for it
By Austin on Nov 26, 2012
I don’t at all mind that it’s not coming out– I mind that he gave us a reason that’s obviously disingenuous because that’s not what Gearbox looks for when they decide what platforms to release for. Unless they only base it off of whether the controller adds a lot when it’s a Nintendo console, in which case that stinks as well.
By thomas on Nov 26, 2012
Gearbox is the developer, the reason you give is most likely the publisher’s thinking.
By Bikop on Nov 26, 2012
I agree with thomas; Gearbox is probably just trying to stay out of trouble. They hurt themselves a little back around the time Borderlands 2 was comming out for one guy not thinking before saying something like “girlfriend mode.” Maybe they are still playing it safe after that. Anyway, like thomas said, this is probably 2K’s doing. (I think they publish Borderlands, correct me if I’m wrong.)
By Austin on Nov 26, 2012
I don’t see how it would be playing it not-safe to say they don’t want to develop for Wii U.
By Bikop on Nov 26, 2012
They are playing it safe by not making their publisher mad. If they came out and said they didn’t want to develop for the Wii U, as reasonable as that is, some people would be upset, so they just decided to feed us a white lie so the public doesn’t really think much of it. Saying they were not going to develop for the Wii U could only either hurt them or be a lateral move. Could it have been handled better? Yeah, maybe, but they decided to avoid any chance of angering the community, and by angering the community, angering 2K. If this was an independent developer like Mojang, I’m sure we would hear what is really going on.