Vblank still hasn’t made a cent off Retro City Rampage WiiWare, no plans to bring game to Wii U, future Nintendo support, more

In a recent interview with Nintendo Life, Vblank Entertainment founder Brian Provinciano commented on a wide array of topics. Provinciano confirmed that he still hasn’t made a cent off of Retro City Rampage’s Wii sales because the official WiiWare threshhold hasn’t been met, revealed that there aren’t plans to bring the game to Wii U, discussed supporting Nintendo platforms in the future, and more.

You can find some of Provinciano’s comments after the break.

On not reaching WiiWare’s sales threshold and therefore not earning anything on this version’s sales…

Correct, it never came close to hitting the WiiWare sales threshold. I still haven’t made a penny off of it, but I’ve made more than enough from the other platforms to balance it out.

There was some confusion after an article hit online with vague sales numbers based on an undetailed chart of gross revenue. This led some to believe that it’d made money even though it hadn’t. It sparked an internet mob attacking me, claiming that I called it a gift to the fans yet made a bunch of money, which I hadn’t actually made.

It was very unfortunate because I’d invested a lot of money into releasing it, purely out of goodwill for the fans, only to have that goodwill completely erased and become a victim of attacks after a misunderstanding. That’s how the internet works these days though. I see it more and more every day with things such as Twitter. Something gets taken out of context or misinterpreted, then a mob blows it out of proportion and everyone loses. In this case, a post mentioned the gross revenue per platform to the nearest $100K. Wii was listed as “under $100K” (in reality, this was closer to $15K). All of a sudden people who don’t understand what gross revenue means simultaneously round it up and think I made $100K off of it. As I said, I still hadn’t made a cent on it, not even that $15K. Even if it had hit the threshold, it’d still need to generate more than $20K of revshare for there to be actual profit. It’s very unfortunate how people who don’t understand how things work can create such a stir.
Regardless, I’m happy to have kept my word to fans and working with Nintendo’s been great, so I’m happy to continue supporting both the fans and Nintendo.

On working with Nintendo…

Nintendo’s always been great. NOA and NOE, the people at both feel like family. They’re responsive and on top of things, so zero complaints from my front.

On whether Retro City Rampage could come to Wii U…

Only 3DS. I bought a Wii U devkit and explored it for a bit, learned about how the system worked and so forth, but will not be bringing Retro City Rampage to it. Possibly future titles, but because the WiiWare version’s available for purchase on both Wii and Wii U in Wii Mode, the low sales numbers don’t put a native port on the to do list. Even with the extra steps required between purchasing WiiWare games on the Wii U, I feel that if players truly wanted it on their Wii U, they would be buying the WiiWare version. It doesn’t give me the confidence that a native Wii U port would all of a sudden cause a flood of new players.

On whether Vblank will bring future projects to Nintendo systems…

I definitely want to continue supporting Nintendo systems with future games. It’ll come down to which systems are the right fit on a per-game basis.