Minecraft may eventually get a release on the struggling Nintendo WiiU, if the conditions are right.
Speaking with TotalXbox, 4J’s Daniel Kaplan discussed the porting of Minecraft to the PS4 and Xbox One whilst hinting towards what would be needed for a Wii U release.
“There aren’t many platforms left to release on. We’ll see, whatever makes sense and if the platform has the user base for it. We won’t release on the platform is the base is very small because it’s much too big of an effort.”
The few platforms left are undoubtedly the WiiU, PS Vita and Nintendo 3DS, though the PS Vita is in development and was poised to launch alongside the PS4 version this August before being pushed back.
4J only want to release Minecraft on platforms that will sell the game, so it’s not unreasonable for them to be doubtful about releasing on the WiiU which has yet to hit the 10 million units sold milestone, despite being out on the market for almost 2 years. As well as a large install base being needed, an efficient update system has to be in place. Minecraft isn’t quite like other games, there are constant updates to add features, resolve issues and provide new content to end-users. Kaplan goes on to state that:
“The whole point of Minecraft is that you get updates all the time. If you release somewhere you want to make sure that we will be updating rather than, ‘Oh yeah, we only sold 1000 copies on that platform so let’s kill it off’. That’s not the way Minecraft has been developed.”
It’s good to know that 4J is committed to their product and aren’t happy to release it on a platform where it may wither and die, but with the WiiU’s relatively small install base and not-so-smooth updating processes, it could be a while before 4J port Minecraft to the WiiU…
Personally I think the WiiU would be the ideal console for Minecraft to release. The GamePad was made for games like this, think of the functionality!
Would you like to see Minecraft on the WiiU and Nintendo 3DS? Grab your pickaxe and chisel away a comment down below.
