La-Mulana on WiiWare gets the chop

Sad news everyone! La-Mulana won’t be getting a release in either Europe or America. Nicalis, the publisher of the title, announced their intention to step away from publishing the title on Twitter earlier this week. Their message was short and succinct, it was on Twitter after all. “Regarding La-Mulana, we have chosen to cancel publishing in North America and Europe for WiiWare“.

The developers of the game weren’t told of this move either until they saw the Tweet. They tweeted “We’re very embarrassed by Nicalis’s announcement. Please give us some time to confirm the matter. We’ll report it on our official website.”

The game was released in Japan in June 2011 and has been in limbo for release in English since then. There have been updates as to the progress of the game coming out on the developers blog, via Nicalis on Twitter and there have been various reasons given for the delays, mostly due to certification with Nintendo.

So why cancel the game after so much work has been done and while it’s seemingly so close to release? Nicalis’ Tyrone Rodriguez has commented to GoNintendo saying “The decision to cancel publishing of La-Mulana was a tough call, but waiting two years for NIGORO to finish development has made it near impossible to sell sufficient units on Wii. The WiiWare market has a fraction of the players from 2008. The window for release and success of software on the platform ended in 2009 and took a very steep decline. Players have moved onto other digital download platforms.”

Nintendo’s bizarre minimum sales levels and developer limits for the WiiWare platform, coupled with a general lack of marketing, as well as the fact that the Wii U is just around the corner have all come together and this is unfortunately the result for some projects.

It’s a shame WiiWare has come to this.