Update: “not cancelled” – Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty team facing issues with Wii U due to a lack of hard drive

Update: The official Oddworld Inhabitants Twitter account just issued the following message on Twitter over concerns that the Wii U version has been cancelled:

The Wii U version of Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty seems to be facing a bit of trouble.

During the latest episode of the Fragments of Silicon podcast, Oddworld creator Lorne Lanning mentioned that the team is “having challenges without having a hard disk”. However, he quickly added: “we’re trying to overcome those challenges.”

Lanning went on to say that he’s “desperate to be on Nintendo” and feels that “Oddworld will resonate well” with the Nintendo audience.

Read on below for the full transcript of Lanning’s comments.

You know, we’re having challenges without having a hard disk, but we’re trying to overcome those challenges. Because really I am desperate to be on Nintendo. I mean as a a big fan of Nintendo through the ages and never having one of my games on it, I feel like a left out stepchild.

I also feel like Oddworld was always right for the Nintendo audience. The Nintendo audience is not necessarily looking for Call of Duty, right? And I’ve always felt sort of connected to that Nintendo audience as a player and sad that we haven’t been able to be there as a participant.

So we’re trying to figure it out. And at the end of the day, it’s ultimately time and money and can you do it. But you know, we have a significant amount of money – I should say investment – in time, investment in effort in trying to resolve that issue. But again, if I guaranteed it, I might be being silly. What I can say is we’re absolutely giving it out best effort and we want to succeed. But it is a challenge not having a hard disk.

I’m not the one who is the most up on it to speak to it that intelligently, but I certainly hear the hardships. …But let’s face it, right? If you’re going to make a game for the Wii U, it better run on an 8 gig unit. Otherwise it’s not really a Wii U game.

And it’s like I’m desperate to get on Nintendo. I believe that Oddworld will resonate well with this audience. I believe it always would have. The cartridge days made it impossible for us, I mean Abe’s Oddysee couldn’t fit on an N64 cartridge. And so we just couldn’t even fit the games on there because there was just too much pre-rendered content. Just the movies alone wouldn’t fit on the cartridge…