Metro: Last Light remains a possibility

It emerged yesterday that 4A, the developer behind Metro: Last Light, is not very impressed with the Wii U's CPU; Oles Shishkovtsov, the studio's chief technical officer, called it "a horrible, slow CPU".

Huw Beynon of THQ, publisher for the latest Metro title, elaborated further by saying that bringing the project to Wii U was not something the company was planning at the moment due to the developers being extremely busy building the Playstation 3 version of the game.

Beynon has since spoken to Eurogamer, where he has clarified the comments further saying he was frustrated about the way the story had been handled in the press, and that should the team want to bring Metro: Last Light to Wii U then they could definitely do so.

It's a very CPU intensive game. I think it's been verified by plenty of other sources, including your own Digital Foundry guys, that the CPU on Wii U on the face of it isn't as fast as some of the other consoles out there. Lots of developers are finding ways to get around that because of other interesting parts of the platform.

Just as in the same way that between PC and current console versions there are some compromises that need to be made in certain places and we strive to get the very best performance that we can from any platform we release on.

Beynon confirmed that the team did look at bringing Metro: Last Light to Wii U, saying it was "certainly possible" and something they would like to do. However if a Wii U version was to become a reality, he believes the developer wouldn't be able to do the game justice due to the constraints it would be put under.

The reality is that would mean a dedicated team, dedicated time and effort, and it would either result in a detriment to what we're trying to focus on, already adding a PlayStation 3 SKU, or we probably wouldn't be able to do the Wii U version the justice that we'd want.

It would be a port or we wouldn't be able to get to grips with the system. That's really the essence of it. It's something we can potentially look at and return to later. Given the targets we've set for the game, it didn't make sense to proceed with it at this point.

Shishkovtsov's comments on the Wii U's CPU have generated a lot of debate on the issue, with many people worried that the system will suffer in the future when Sony and Microsoft reveal their new and inevitably more powerful consoles. Gustav Halling, lead designer on Battlefield 3: Armored Kill at DICE, has also voiced his opinion on the subject, taking to Twitter to say it will "shorten its life a lot when new gen starts".

It seems unlikely then that Metro: Last Light will see the light of day on Wii U, not because the system can't handle it but because the team is currently busy on other projects. However the arguments surrounding the console's seemingly less than stellar CPU refuse to go away.

What are your thoughts on this? Does the Wii U's CPU make you worry about the future of the console?

[source eurogamer.net, via twitter.com]