Hideki Kamiya Explains Why The Wonderful 101: Remastered Is Getting Crowdfunded, Instead Of Being Nintendo-Exclusive
Earlier today, PlatinumGames had launched a Kickstarter for The Wonderful 101: Remastered on multiple platforms. The campaign quickly reached its target and stretch goals in mere hours – meaning that the game will also hit Steam and PS4 in the future. Well, the game’s producer Hideki Kamiya has revealed more details about the game going beyond Nintendo platforms!
In an exclusive interview with Gematsu’s Cory Arnold, Kamiya spoke about PlatinumGames was crowdfunding the multi-platform release themselves, instead of just having Nintendo publish the game exclusively for Switch.
Namely, Platinum wanted the game to reach a much wider audience with more platforms – and spoke to Nintendo about this idea. In response, Nintendo said that PlatinumGames either stay exclusive to Nintendo platforms or work on multiple platforms themselves. In the end, the two apparently ‘cut a deal’ and Nintendo gave PlatinumGames their blessings to go forward with the Kickstarter campaign:
— Considering The Wonderful 101 was originally published by Nintendo and released for Wii U, is it safe to assume The Wonderful 101 Remastered will only release for Switch, or will it be possible to bring to other platforms?
Hideki Kamiya (Platinum Games): “The initial goal is Switch. Depending on stretch goals, we will be porting it to more and more consoles like PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Steam. That is the goal right now.”
—Why did you decide to bring The Wonderful 101 to new platforms? Did you talk to Nintendo about a port?
Kamiya: “We felt it did not quite reach the audience that it deserved. As creators we are very confident in the game. This project is a unique opportunity to bring the fans together and see how far the game can go, which is why we went the crowdfunding route. We did speak with Nintendo about it initially, but they said, ‘you either do it only with us or do it yourselves.’ But speaking with them they allowed us to cut a deal, so we took upon ourselves to start this project. Dangen Entertainment is helping us. We have seen successful campaigns in the past, Bloodstained in particular, so we saw it as a very unique and interesting opportunity.”
The nature of this ‘deal’ between Nintendo and PlatinumGames is not exactly clear – but at least it’s opened the gates for The Wonderful 101 to see a modern revival on even more platforms! We’ll report back as we hear more about the game in the future.
