Metro: Last Light dev says Wii U has "a horrible, slow CPU"

The developer of Metro: Last Light has lashed out at the technical innards of Nintendo’s Wii U.

Wii U has a horrible, slow CPU,” 4A Games’ chief technical officer Oles Shishkovtsov told NowGamer, with colleague Huw Beyon adding: We had an early look at it, we thought we could probably do it, but in terms of the impact we would make on the overall quality of the game – potentially to its detriment – we just figured it wasn’t worth pursuing at this time.

It’s something we might return to. I really couldn’t make any promises, though. We had an initial look at the Wii U, but given the size of the team and compared to where we were last time, just developing for the PS3 is a significant addition.”

However, it’s far too early to draw any meaningful conclusions.

Launch and early cycle games on any new platforms soon become outdated as developers get to grips with unfamiliar hardware. Just compare the visuals of, say, Black Ops II and Call of Duty 2 for example.

Add to this that reports from elsewhere don’t tie-in with 4A Games’ assessment. Mass Effect 3 on Wii U, for instance, seems to be more or less comparable with the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions, and even arguably superior to the latter.

Note too that Last Night comes with some pretty serious hardware requirements on PC.