[Opinion] Gearbox’s reason for not putting Borderlands on Wi

[Austin]

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Game publishers and developers shove nonsense into our faces a lot, and most of the time we just say “Yea, that’s cool. It makes sense.”, even when it doesn’t.

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.

[Patrick]

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.

[pie]

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

[Austin]

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.

[thomas]

Gearbox is the developer, the reason you give is most likely the publisher's thinking.

[Bikop]

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.)

[Austin]

I don't see how it would be playing it not-safe to say they don't want to develop for Wii U.

[Bikop]

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.