Eternity's Child too big for XBLA, gets Wii instead

60 Comments by Justin McElroy Sep 10th 2007 12:59PM
Filed under: Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360

We were excited for the XBLA release of Eternity's Child, an odd but gorgeous 2D platformer that featured an orphaned, wingless angel. Now it seems that developer Luc Bernard is picking up stakes and moving the whole production to the Wii for a retail release with Alten8, a UK publisher. Bernard explained the move saying that the high-res art in his game would have put him over the XBLA 150MB size limit.

Development will have to be fundamentally restarted on the Wii, but Bernard will be staying with a traditional control scheme, shying away from Wii's motion controls. Bernard told Art du Jeu that he's also working on a DS version, though it will be different from its console parent. We have to admire Bernard's willingness to start from scratch to keep the integrity of his game's art. ... Of course, we're sure the fact that the Wii's been selling like nickel tickets to a witchcraft-enabled Beatles reunion concert made the choice a little easier.

Tags: eternityschild, wii, xbla

Source

(Page 1) Reader Comments

Cellien: Sep 10th 2007; 1:04PM

Irony: Wii doesn't support hi-res art. :)

ShortFuse: Sep 10th 2007; 1:09PM

I was about to mention this. Going from max resolution of 1920x1080 to 720x480, ouch. The PS3 has a larger size limit but smaller customer install base.

Cellien: Sep 10th 2007; 1:18PM

Don't get me wrong, I think it will probably look great on the Wii, but I work in game dev, and I think this guy is pulling an excuse out (not sure why). You can easily run games in hi-res and not EVERY piece of source art has to be that big. For example, on a 1280x720p (min required resolution) only the backgrounds would have to be full res. Your sprites can be tiny 100x100 pixels that take up not much more than 100-200k. Only thing I can think is that this game is very long and doesn't repeat characters.

Crono: Sep 10th 2007; 1:20PM

Hi-res means even less when its 2d hand-drawn. In fact, most of the 2d games look great on wii. See Paper Mario for example.

waves: Sep 10th 2007; 1:31PM

Also see Vanillasare's games. Odin Sphere and Grim Grimoire for the PS2 and their new ninja game for the Wii all feature beautiful hand drawn art using last gen graphics hardware.

hvnlysoldr: Sep 10th 2007; 2:52PM

That's not irony. It's just a coincidence. ;]

mr nimblewick: Sep 10th 2007; 1:07PM

Interesting. I would to see more of this game.

samfish: Sep 10th 2007; 1:11PM

Sweet. I can see myself buying this, just to marvel at the visuals.

Between this and the new game Vanilla Ware is working on, good ol' 2D gaming is looking to get a revival of sorts on the Wii, maybe.

Now if the Wii can just get a Castle Crashers port...

Stubby Boardman: Sep 10th 2007; 1:11PM

come on! lift the damn limit. so what if people without ardrives cant download them. Instead of disappointing a few you're disappointing all.

James: Sep 10th 2007; 1:17PM

Not really, there are more Wii's out there than 360's, and even more Wii's than HDD 360's!

Disappointing only the people who won't buy Wii.

KingOfGods: Sep 10th 2007; 1:19PM

It has nothing to do with the core users. MS has always stated that XBLA was to have games that are quick to download.

Burnt Meatloaf: Sep 11th 2007; 4:47AM

Having grown up with the C64 and Amiga, I find it amazing that 150MB isn't enough for games too small for retail. I recall the golden age of 2D games involved 4MB cartridges.

Does nobody understand optimization these days? You can do some very clever compression with the right filters.

Vidikron: Sep 10th 2007; 1:13PM

So I wonder how much it will cost on the Wii then? It would have likely been $10 on XBLA. So remove the hi-res art, raise the price $30, and put it on the Wii FTW?

mr nimblewick: Sep 10th 2007; 1:16PM

Yeah, they should make it a wiiware title if they can get the file size smaller, which should be possible without high res art.

Vidikron: Sep 10th 2007; 1:20PM

Yeah, WiiWare seems like a good place for this title to go.

Vidikron: Sep 10th 2007; 1:22PM

Then again, the internal storage on the Wii isn't very large. If this game is going to come in around or above 150 MB it would be taking a very large chunk of the internal storage.

mr nimblewick: Sep 10th 2007; 1:27PM

Here's still hoping to being able to play games off SD cards.

PhydeWice: Sep 11th 2007; 2:28AM

If Nintendo ever launched a system update for USB storage support and running WiiWare titles from it, we'd be all set. Then I'd just by an external USB HDD.

Vidikron: Sep 10th 2007; 1:19PM

Is there any reason this couldn't be in HD on the Wii? AFAIK the the Wii can technically output HD resolutions.. right? This seems like the sort of game that the Wii should be able to push at 720p and not have to sacrifice any of the art.

Almack64: Sep 10th 2007; 1:29PM

That's actually a good question. Hardwarewise there realy isn't anything that stops the wii from doing 720p, right?

Evan: Sep 10th 2007; 1:46PM

Except the frequency of the D/A convertors.

ShortFuse: Sep 10th 2007; 1:53PM

Wii is similar in speed to the Xbox1, maybe a little faster CPU and slower GPU, but the xbox1 was capable of 720p. Let's hope Nintendo thought ahead (though this game probably wouldn't be the one to break in the 720p)

ShortFuse: Sep 10th 2007; 1:54PM

Oh yeah, and GT4 on the PS2 could run at 1080i.

ScreamingSkull: Sep 10th 2007; 2:37PM

then you should pay them more! ;)

Crono: Sep 10th 2007; 3:25PM

Rogue Squadron (GC) could also run at 1080i, I believe. Perhaps 1080p, but I'm not sure.

Truepatriot: Sep 10th 2007; 1:21PM

MS needs to call this guy back up and raise the limit for his game! it looks very interesting and i would like a chance to play it =(

Almack64: Sep 10th 2007; 1:25PM

Just buy a wii, they're pretty, tiny, hip, the ladies like like em, and only $250.

Truepatriot: Sep 10th 2007; 1:33PM

no thanks ive played the wii and its not my type of console.the ladies dont come over to play games either.......or at all lol
the women i might dont tend to even know a wii exist.

Almack64: Sep 10th 2007; 1:22PM

Overall this is interesting,

1)The reason for moving to the wii is the "hi-res art" would make the file size too large for XBLA

2)The wii does not produce hi-res art therefore thr file size will be smaller

Probably what they meant by high-res art was just that their general art direction would require more space rather than it being actually produced in high resoultion. That would make more sense.

Mr Khan: Sep 10th 2007; 5:15PM

It leaves them with two courses of action

1. Flesh out the game to the extreme to fill the extra 8.3 GB on the DVD 9

2. Redraw all in Standard def and release on WiiWare

all in all, probably would've been better for them to find a way to work it out with Microsoft, even though i'm not complaining, now i get a chance to play this game that i had never heard of, but looks very interesting

Captain Jody Anthony XVIII: Sep 10th 2007; 1:23PM

i have never heard of this game but those graphics look awesome.

copa: Sep 10th 2007; 1:23PM

Microsoft has been the best platform for third-party software sales so far, so they've been able to get away with some of this stuff. But they are going to have to re-think their approach over the long term.

Shutting out a creative, independent title from XBLA because of an arbitrary size limit.

Losing titles like UT3 because they are unwilling to accomodate third-party servers for user-created content.

Charging Rock Band $20 per wireless controller in licensing fees, causing the game to be cheaper on the PS3.

It's a shorter path than you think from Microsoft to Sony.

hvnlysoldr: Sep 10th 2007; 1:32PM

Microsoft's entire game plan, yes I intend pawns, revolves on beating Sony. The threat of the entertainment center merging into computers. That Sony would use PS as a platform into computers and take over their market is what drove MS into gaming.

NaeemTHM: Sep 10th 2007; 1:58PM

When something get ported to the Wii, we should say "get's Wii'd on".

As in: Eternity's Child gets Wii'd on.

megaStryke: Sep 10th 2007; 4:54PM

Why so many down-votes on this one? I thought it rather mildly amusing.

vidGuy: Sep 10th 2007; 1:58PM

I'd be all for this if I didn't have the feeling that it's going to be a $40 title :(

mr nimblewick: Sep 10th 2007; 3:41PM

I thought that too. Then I remembered I used to pay $50 for side-scrollers. So it's okay.

Vince: Sep 10th 2007; 2:01PM

ITT stealth Wii bashing.

totencough: Sep 10th 2007; 2:12PM

You can come on over to the PS3, it's ok! We don't bite.

hvnlysoldr: Sep 10th 2007; 2:53PM

That's what Rumble said.

megaStryke: Sep 10th 2007; 3:34PM

Pirates wear glasses for day vision.

Lijik: Sep 10th 2007; 2:40PM

I remember playing this game on my cell phone, it was pretty fun but the jump command was wonky, and the gun weapon sucked.

Also, I find it interesting how much the art design has changed from the mobile version, which looked heavily inspired by Jhonen Vasquez.

megaStryke: Sep 10th 2007; 2:59PM

If this game couldn't be served over XBLA because it would exceed the size limit, why would anyone think it could possibly be a WiiWare title?

Crono: Sep 10th 2007; 3:27PM

Thats what I was just thinking.

bounchfx: Sep 10th 2007; 3:21PM

ugh, what? there goes beautiful HD 2d.

megaStryke: Sep 10th 2007; 3:29PM

You still have SSF2THD Remix.

Sean: Sep 10th 2007; 3:29PM

That artwork looks excellent.

VampireHunter Z: Sep 10th 2007; 3:29PM

100MB of pure HD backgrounds and sprites is a lot. Each mp3 track is about 2 minutes before it loops. The actual code is just text can fit within 5MB. I call BS on this one.

Alex K.: Sep 10th 2007; 3:35PM

I disagree. Since it's all hand-drawn, you have levels that require huge non-repeating backgrounds that would be ruined with compression or lower resolution. In a 3D game or even in a non-hand drawn 2D game, there is more repetition and smaller image sizes.

It's pretty easy to exceed 150MB. Even if the game doesn't exceed 150MB, it's a much smarter business decision to release the game in Wii since it's 2D anyway.