Poor Odds of The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth Coming to Wii U as Nicalis Says It's "Not Much More Powerful Than a PS Vita"

Glad I never bought the one 'wii' do have after that last tweet - humility goes a long way regarding online conduct.

Sounds like another case of a developer wanting more power to save them work.

I find it pretty hard to believe that games like W101 and Bayonetta can play on the Wii U and a game that uses sprites and such doesn't. Perhaps I don't really now what all goes on in Binding of Isaac but it does sound to me like a bit of an excuse to not optimize the code a little for the system. Sounds like someone didn't do proper garbage collection in their code in the first place.

"Not more powerful than a PS Vita"?

Calling all the bull in the world on that one.

A PS Vita would not be running Super Smash Bros 4 like that.

Glad I never supported this game or this series. Dev sounds like an tantrummy, embittered jerk.

They were always a bunch of nincompoops, complete idiots. They couldn't get Wiiware to work although it had wonderful games, and now they can't figure how to port a flash lookalike game to a full HD console. Not worth attention even.

YYeah, let's Yeah, let's see the Vita run Smash 4, Mario 3D World, and Mario Kart 8 at 60fps

The New 3DS version of Isaac was released as a broken mess, but Afterbirth expansion does not stand up to Tyrone's rigid quality standards. Ooooookay. Did they ever even fix 1001 Spikes?

I think we are way past the "Wii U might not be as powerful..." nonsense.

@inverse He said not MUCH more powerful, which I agree is still BS, just made a little correction.

Is this the company's excuse for 90s Arcade Racer being AWOL for nearly 2 years now?

Excuses, excuses...

Ah well, I don't plan to support a game that mocks religion, anyways.

Unoptimised game runs at low FPS on Wii U and Vita, that must mean they are about as powerful as each other.

A lot of people are reacting to his twitter post with comments about Bayonetta 2 on Vita, but what they should mention is the Bayonetta ran horribly on PS3. Not because the PS3 couldn't handle it, but because it was ported by a third party who did a terrible job at optimising the game for the PS3. Which is more appropriate here.

He sounds like a high school kid who did not get his way. This is unbecoming of an adult, especially an adult professional.

And what does power even have to do with The Binding of Isaac? How is that even an excuse for not releasing that particular game on that platform? I'm pretty sure the game's not very demanding, a downgraded port even runs on the New 3DS, which is much, much weaker than a Wii U. I don't know if the Wii U is much more powerful than a Vita or not, but I know this is BS.

Sounds lazy. They cannot/ will not bother to optimize their code for each console port, cuz honestly, where oh where does this game scream only for the most powerful console?

lol, just lol. tell him to take a look at fast racing neo. and then continue to lol.

I don't get it. What is so advanced about a top-down 2D dungeon crawler game that it can't run on a platform that has games like Xenoblade X, or just regular Xenoblade on the new 3DS?

Whoa, this is Bethesda all over again. And I've seen The Binding of Isaac Afterbirth on Youtube: NO WAY THE WIIU AND THE 3DS CAN'T PULL IT OFF.

It's a friggin' top-down 2D roguelike. Tyrone, YOU stop lying to yourself! And learn some humility for crying out loud!

Tyrone Rodriguez is a pompous, simple jerk - hardly an expert programming working for Nicalis.

I'm as big a critic of Wii U's hardware as any but many of its games are 360 quality in graphics, many better including the quick and dirty rubbish 3rd party ports which are on par in general.

Doesn't make sense considering the Vita is only 2x the power of PS2 and has yet to feature a game with graphics on par or resolution with PS3, most Vita titles are 480p or much lower resolution.

I'd like to see Xenoblade X running on Vita at a 720p30 resolution combined with the outstanding draw distance and texturing.

How about the number of other Indie games that are essentially the PS4 editions at lower 720p???

I think Tyrone can't be bothered with optimisation, why would he? He's probably low paid, overworked and looking at the actual game from a design point of view it looks pretty bland and generic.

The Last of Us ran at only a few FPS when initally ported to PS4. Did Naughty Dog sit back and say 'PS4 is less powerful than PS3' No, they optimised the game and at the end they had it running at 1080p60.

Wii U IS way more powerful than a Vita, it's just that you can say they're within the same "home console generation" as the PS3 and 360 when you compare their real world performance.Wii U MAYBE at the high-end of that certain spectrum (PS3 still has plenty of better looking games though), while Vita is at the low-end.
Of course it goes without saying that the 3DS family aren't in that spectrum at all; they're obviously comparable to the 6th generation.

Think the only reason Vita continues to get western indie support is because its ARM architecture is likely easier to develop for than the Wii U's PowerPC. Likely also one of the reasons why (along with being a Sony handheld in Japan) Vita gets EXCELLENT 3rd party support in Japan.

Though, isn't the Wii U similar to the 360 in architecture or whatnot? I would think that he would be able to port it easily from 360 to Wii U. The only console this gen I think would present a challenge would be 3DS.

Also the fact that rebirth can only run on new 3ds is ridiculous. Other people are pulling of way more impressive stuff on the normal 3ds.

I preferred Atic Atac to Binding of Isaac anyway. Nintendo should expand the VC to include Spectrum games or somebody should remake Atic Atac so we can all enjoy the original.

Sounds like a poor optimization team than anything...

If anything it just proves that Tyrone is really bad at optimizing code.

Not true. Wii U is more powerful than a Vita.

Maybe he's just not competent enough to port it.

I guess that some people simply have no idea how to code a game properly. Like seriously, what is there in BoI that requires so much raw power? Amount of bullets and moving objects? I've seen more in SNES shmups way back in the 90's, and they even had scrolling backgrounds to boot. And don't even get me started on NEO Geo library... I think that Tyrone was simply afraid to say that they will not port the DLC because the sales of the game were bad, because I can't imagine any developer saying such nonsense and being able to sleep at night. :/

@AVahne It is roughly similar, but not quite. Wii U's CPU has different approach to computing, requiring less brute force approach and more code branching to be efficient, and the eDRAM in Nintendo's console does not have the additional 128 stream processors for Z-buffering, alpha and AA - that has to be done by the GPU, which is in turn more powerful. Transplanting directly does not work well, as we've seen with CoD Black Ops 2, but then again - how badly is BoI coded if it can't run properly compared to CoD?

I'm sorry I can't port River City Ransom to PS4, it just isn't powerful enough lol

Sounds like a crappy lazy developer. Glad I didn't bother playing the first game.

Buy our games

@AVahne
Are you saying that the high end Wii U games don't look better than the high end PS3 games or that the PS3 has better looking games on ports etc? Becaue if you compare the high end games PS3 isn't even close.

Sounds like developer incompetence/laziness to me. The Wii U is obviously much stronger than the Vita, and really, the Vita should have no problem playing this game. With a competent developer behind it, it would probably even work fine on the 3DS.

@A01
Nintendo's file limit was in place from the beginning. Team Meat knew about it when they promised the game, and then proceeded to make a game that wouldn't fit it, and blame Nintendo for a rule they chose to ignore.

I see absolutely no reason why Afterbirth can't run well on the Wii U unless Nicalis is completely incompetent at porting a 2D game. Oh wait.

...Really? You're sure about that?

That's complete crap. Your incompetence is not a console's weakness. If the Wii U can run Xenoblade Chronicles X smoothly, then it can handle the next frigging Binding of Isaac.

Oh, good Lord. Are we actually comparing the Wii U to the Vita here?
Sheesh...

Even if he was given more power, he'll still come up with more excuses not to release it just cause it's Nintendo.

Yay another broken series abandoned on Nintendo.

Game series is ugly and disconcerting anyways. Don't know why anyone plays it (in a certain degree).

Not much more powerful than a vita?! He must know something that the likes of nintendo/platinum/monolith don't. Come to think of it, nintendo must obviously use a super secret hyperdrive mode for their own games just to make sure they look better than vita games.
Alternatively, this BoI update thing includes a secret whereby you can unlock the full batman arkham knight and witcher 3 games and so they couldn't get it to work on wii u..

@VeeFlamesNL

Geeze you guys, my super awesome totally fantastic game series just won't work on the Xbox 360. It's really not that much more power than the Atari 2600. Stop kidding yourselves.

Since the Vita was considered a "handheld PS3" to begin with, saying the Wii U isn't much more powerful just reaffirms what we've known for years now. That the Wii U is a little more powerful than a PS3 and 360. Seriously pointless, trolling tweet.

I wouldn't support him anyway

What an idiot. I'll make sure never to buy any of his games.

That excuse is saying, since no one bought my unoptomized game, no afterbirth for you!

I'm telling you, this all was probably what that idiot Edmund McMillen told him to say. Meatboy all over again... completely incompetent developers.

This does suck as The Binding of Iscac is a great adictive game. They should just have stated the truth though, it is not cost effective to code the game properly for Wii U. Saying the system doesn't work well with the code is one thing, saying it is not powerful enough is something else entirely.

Well, Tyrone Rodriguez, I was on the fence about whether I was going to buy your stupid game or not. And now I am simply refusing to support you because you are a douchebag.

Seriously, as a developer myself I see no reason this couldn't run on Wii U. People need to learn to optimize. Sure, it might require some effort depending on the code. But it's a code issue, not a hardware issue.

@Imerion
Tyrone Rodriguez is effectively the poor mechanic blaming his tools.

"But Wii U doesn't let me publish games with the freeware version of GameMaker Pro!"

The fact is, he's not lying.

The Wii U is a little bit more powerful than the Xbox 360 and PS3, and the Vita is around the power of those last-gen systems too. Ergo, the Wii U isn't much more powerful than a Vita.

I don't get how a largely simple looking 2D game is struggling so much to run on these systems though. Unless he's creating it using some kind of third party game development software, and that software isn't particularly well optimised for Wii U.

That's probably the only reason a relatively simple 2D game should be struggling to run on Wii U--well, that or sloppy coding, I guess.

Wouldn't waste my time or money anyway.

audible sigh

So this "developer" is saying that The Binding of Isaac Afterbirth has more storage than Xenoblade Chronicles X which takes 22 GB to download, Super Smash bros. which takes 15 GB to download, all the third party games which mostly take around 15 GB to download, and Fatal Frame V which takes 16 GB to download. And he is basically saying that all of these games which most run at a buttery smooth 60 fps can be played on the PS Vita.
Nicalis my friend you have lost a potential buyer. >

I'm not going to touch his comment...however my question is: why is he unable or unwilling to optimize this game properly? The wiiu can run this...is he just not a unity fan?

I agree the Wii U isn't powerful at all, It can't handle graphical flash games like the Binding of Isaac. Look at the games it handles SM3DW, SSB4, MK8.... Bayonetta 2......Xenoblade CX........ oh

If he just left it at the first tweet it would of been ok since that seem like a personal obstacle like with the coding, experience or something, but after the next tweet he lost creditability. The Wii U is not as powerful as a PS4 and Xbox One but developers have created games that been close to and on par with them in quality. So "lack of power" talk don't do it for me.

Even if he's right, perhaps that was overly blunt for a Nintendo licensed developer. People tend not to want to hear development woes and his was not delivered with any tact.

@AlexSora89 In regards to the Bethseda situation, Sony kind of screwed up their architecture in regards to their RAM set up and Bethseda wasn't the only ones to say they had trouble with it. Bethseda's engine is designed for a lot of backend processing, something the PS3 wasn't the best at.

@TruenoGT
Developers actually did try that optimization thing last year with Wii games. Some of them anyway, not that it bore any fruit unfortunately.

I'm not going to bother with the comments of the developer I'll just treat them with contempt they deserve but I never liked the game I got it free with ps plus on the ps4 I think I played it for about an hour then just gave up on it I just couldn't see the appeal of the game

I'm calling bull as well, because it's been found that the Vita's 4 CPU cores are clocked at max 444Mhz, which is not only less than the Wii U's 3-1.2Ghz PPC cores, but also less than the n3DS's 4-804Mhz ARM cores. Architecture does play a part in overall performance, but not THAT much to push Vita up towards Wii U performance, considering Vita has to deal with portability. The Vita does have a good GPU for being a portable system, but again, not THAT good.

@Ryu_Niiyama Because he doesn't want to develop for Nintendo consoles. But he doesn't have the guts to say the truth, as you can already see.

Not good reputation building from this Nicalis guy and for his development team.

@Smash_kirby
I feel bad for Sony fans then. I'm sure Bethesda blamed it on Sony in that case too, instead of, you know, working on a port.

With some downscaled graphics, the WiiU can handle any PS4 or Xbox One game. Too bad the Wii port of Dead Rising was so poorly received (and made), that was the right road to take.

@manu0 All I know is that Isaac runs pretty poorly on the New 3DS, but it's buttery smooth (for the most part) on Vita.

Either way, I do 90% of my gaming between the two handhelds and was eagerly awaiting Afterbirth. One word – gutted

@xxAcesHighxx It's even running poorly on New 3DS? LOL, that's ridiculous. If this guy (or his company) can't optimise a game for a platform they shouldn't release the game on it.

There's no way the Vita could run a single one of its games, probably even the less complex ones, at 1080p, I'm sure, illustrating immediately how ridiculous this statement is. Yet another case where I can't help but think Twitter, when used impulsively and/or stupidly, can be extremely self-destructive. I try not to be a fanboy about my love of Nintendo, but saying that makes him seem like a complete idiot. I have trouble divorcing the people who make games from the games they make, and like Phil Fish before him, it makes me less inclined to support his work financially if he's going to have pointless tantrums on the internet where he sounds like a fool. I know that BoI comes from Edmund McMillen at the end of the day, however, so I won't begrudge the game for him saying something willfully stupid, but I certainly will hope that games I want get ported to Nintendo hardware by someone else to avoid supporting his occasional outbursts of lunacy. I have no delusions about the Wii U being a powerhouse console (the PS4 and X1 clearly outclass it completely), but comparing it to the Vita in terms of power is hard not to snicker at, and his arrogance in making such a foolish statement is almost embarrassing.

Wait... So the game that can run well on my under-powered personal computer that is over 7 years old and uses an cheap integrated graphics chip, with no slowdown, is incapable of running on a home console released three years ago. Yeah, that doesn't pass the smell test.

Damn. He definitely just upgraded to a grade A butthat. He's also blatantly lying. But hey, whatever. Wasn't he the one that didn't want to release Binding of Isaac in the first place on Nintendo by claiming he was told they weren't allowed even though we found out that Nintendo themselves said they had no problem? Well... so there's that. Let McMillen do the talking instead, k?

I think it's developers incompetence. No way such game looking like made in flash can't run on Wii U. As a beginner game developer, i don't believe it would be that hard to run this game on PSP.

...Is it a joke? Man, that's kindergarten level. No, kindergartners don't find this funny, ALIENS don't find this funny!

@Minish That's exactly what this is - developer's incompetence.

The issue isn't the hardware. It's the fact that the developer clearly doesn't have strong enough abilities working with raw code and has instead had to rely on third-party game development software and tools.

@Stu13 They fixed 1001 Spikes a couple of months ago. It did take a long time for them to get that patch out though.

Sounds like this guy doesn't know how to utilize the Wii U's resources properly and is just making excuses.

While I love Binding of Isaac on PC and played around 50 hours on it, but I didn't bother buying on the Wii U or 3DS since Nicalis are really bad developers when it comes to Nintendo architecture. I have rebought several indie games on my Wii U that I already had on PC just to support the eShop but Nicalis are so demeaning to Nintendo users/fans. Hopefully with NX it is closer in architecture to modern PCs so ports can be easier, cheaper, and faster to the platform. Honestly I would have loved to play this on my 3DS.

I'm in shock people make a big deal over this game anyway it is a repetitive old school style game with UGLY ART WORK (SPRITES) , Honestly I've seen better looking titles on a GameBoy Advance .. I played this game all of twenty mins. and thought thats twenty mins. of my life I can't get back in my opinion total shovel ware so I am for one sooooo glad this garbage won't make it to Wii U .

...Yeeeeaaaaah, the Wii U can't handle a 2D cartoon-ish game....but Hyrule Warriors and Xenoblade Chronicles X is just fine?

In other words, what he meant was,

"We actually don't know how to use the Wii U's hardware and don't feel like learning it. It should conform to our standards. So it'll be tough to port our tiny game to the Wii U."

Second tweet, "Turns out the Wii U isn't powerful enough to fix our coding mistakes and optimize our code. We don't feel like changing it, soooo the vita is definitely better than the Wii U.

Won't support this developer if they are that lazy and won't take the time and money to port it properly.

Yeah, I call bull on this.
If Nintendo Systems weren't as powerful as he says, Would we have Smash Bros on the 3DS & Xenoblade Chronicles on New 3DS to begin with?

If you want Rebirth to sell well on the system then it is probably not a good idea to bad mouth it

What a plonker

@Klimbatize Noted. I'll be seeing that the next time it's on sale, then.

I just remembered that he also said a long while back that "the Wii U gamepad is an even greater waste of time and resources" because it's not "substantial".

Guess he could still be bitter with Nintendo rejecting the 1st Binding of Isaac lol

Many 3rd parties need systems with high CPU power so they can brute force the porting of code instead of having to actually port the code over and optimizing it.

This is why ports to other systems tend to be buggy and performance issues.

He's right. Zelda wii u is rather ugly.

@xxAcesHighxx Speaking of, there is a huge patch for 3DS version out today that seems to have cleaned up some of the bomb frame drops and stuff. So weird that he made these comments right before that released.

Welcome to my blacklist, Nicalis.

This game will disappear pretty fast I think.

Never bought a Nicalis game, so don't have an opinion on them. But the comment about Vita similar to WiiU is disturbing. Let me know when Vita can run XCX at the same quality.

People in the comments being totally ignorant again. The problem with the Wii U has always been it's architecture being drastically different to everything else out there. That makes in a nightmare to port games to. It's no good quoting spectacular games that were built ground up for the Wii U. No publisher is going to spend wages on the huge amounts of extra time required to get a port to work when sales are so slow. This is a business at the end of the day. It's not lazy, it's business sense. Nintendo are no different in this regard. It's why this year has been full of quick to develop spin-offs.

yeah this is a typical stance from a highlevel programmer and the problem with abstraction and relying on compliers. but still issac is a very simple game not sure what they having difficulty with.

@Peach64 Truth.

@Stu13 Oh good. I was waiting for them to patch it before buying the N3DS version. I'll still wait for a sale though.

@Sionyn
The game has serious issues on all systems it is on.

A 2D pixel-based dungeon crawler is more technologically demanding than an HD open-world game?

That last tweet came off a bit disrespectful.

@xenocity i wonder if this still a flash issue i remember the rebirth was meant to be a step away from flash but what exactly do they mean have just made a flash compatible engine ?

@Sionyn
They have never said what the issue is regarding the game.
The PC, Xbox One and PS4 versions all have key issues that plague them.

The Vita is said to be extremely easy to develop for; the hardware is familiar and the developer tools friendly. The Wii U may well be powerful in its own right, but it's unique architecture must surely be a hurdle, even more so in light of the system's poor sales.

@Peach64
"People in the comments being totally ignorant again. The problem with the Wii U has always been it's architecture being drastically different to everything else out there. That makes in a nightmare to port games to. It's no good quoting spectacular games that were built ground up for the Wii U. No publisher is going to spend wages on the huge amounts of extra time required to get a port to work when sales are so slow. This is a business at the end of the day. It's not lazy, it's business sense. "

Says the ignorant person making an ignorant comment in the comments section?

The man claimed that the reason they couldn't port the stupid game to the Wii U was because it "wasn't powerful enough". That's the basis of our problems. Who cares about how "different" it is to produce games for the Wii U, we're taking an issue with the bold-faced lie that it's not because the system is difficult to produce for, it's that it lacks the power to run a game as simple as Isaac.

@Peach64 It isn't ignorance. The Wii U being hard to optimize when porting games to it =/= the Wii U being comparable to the PS Vita in terms of power. It's that simple.
Instead of him saying the Wii U is not much more powerful that the Vita as an excuse, how about the developer just says, "The effort to optimize my games on the Wii U is not worth it."?
If anyone's being ignorant, it's the developer. Simple.

If anything it seems more like they're being lazy,Seriously he's acting like it's a big budget AAA release not an expansion of a indie game.

I'm imagining, in retrospect, he'll want a mulligan on that tweet.

I love all of my systems (X1, Wii U, Vita, 3DS), and each of them have their strengths. Comparing them directly is very difficult, but it's hard to see, outside of maybe the 3DS, what is so challenging about this game to not have it running everywhere else.

Like a lot of people are sayingthis statement is complete BS. How in hell does a simple expansion to what can be considered a not very graphically demanding game nneed more power than a PS Vita to run properly. How much you are able to get out of a system is not simply based on the hardware but the competance of the programmers. A powerful system means nothing if the game is terribly optimized or not well coded

@mookysam
Vita uses mobile hardware and it absorbed part of the PS3's tool set.
So you can port many PS3 assets and engines to Vita with a good amount of work, but not difficult.
You can also port from PS4 to Vita slightly easier than porting from PS3.

Though it's not easy enough to convince major publishers to support it.

It is easy to port from 360 to Wii U, since the CPUs are different, it requires some optimizations.
The Wii U GPU is superior to 360 GPU and has newer feature sets if 3rd parties want to use them.

In the end Most Western 3rd parties take money hats in order to support a system, hence why they are missing largely from Steam (you can't get most of Activision, Ubisoft and EA games on Steam).

Square was too busy stuck in development hell rebooting FFXIV to port anything to Wii U (they halted all console development to work on FFXIV reboot).

Capcom has no trouble with support Wii U, no does WB.

@peach64 not really infact powerpc not only is a superior architecture to intels architecture, but it makes little difference here because of highlevel language used.

I dislike the x86 architecture. It's a huge kludge of backwards compatibility, bleh! just a horrible architecture that should been left in 80's

if anything its laziness and/or sloppy programming mostly due highlevel programming and ignorance with the respect to cpu architecture because abstraction hides whats really happing at a electrical level.

also toolchains make it really really is to develop software for all consoles and computers. we literally have never had it so good.

@Mus1cLov3r Same.

@Sionyn
Yet Power/PowerPC is soon to be official dead, since IBM is officially terminating support, development, and production of chip by the end of the year.

Thankfully ARM is also superior now to x86 as well.

This actually makes me kind of furious. I had a lot of goodwill towards Nicalis in the early days, even when others were accusing them of some shady practice. I put off getting Rebirth for my US PS4 because I wanted to support my EU Wii U, and it took months to get here. And now if I want the expansion I have to buy the whole game again on a different console. Absolutely lame of them to wait until it's out on everything to announce that the expansions aren't going to work on it. Get your crap together Nicalis, god darn it.

@Xenocity In that case NX being x86 or ARM is practically a given

It's ridiculous to say that the Wii U isn't much more powerful than the PS Vita. There's lots of great games for the Wii U that would struggle on the PS Vita such as Bayonetta.

However, one of the problems is that it's hard to port games to the Wii U. It takes a lot more effort to get a game looking good on this console due to the vastly different architecture than the other consoles. This is an issue Nintendo needs to address with the NX in order to win back 3rd parties.

@Xenocity So, IBM is ending support for a processor that is still in use by servers worldwide (POWER8) and they are contracted to revise into POWER9 for two supercomputers to be built by 2017? Power Architecture is not going away as it is still used in server, router, and telecom technologies. It also resides in things like cars, planes, and consumer electronics.

Reggie extends them an olive branch and they spit in his face? Screw them, then. I even bought the Wii U and 3DS versions of BoI, but now I'm regretting my decision.

"Barely more powerful than the Vita" my arse...lazy sods.

Then...you must be a crappy developer

Aside from being wrong, these tweets are disturbingly unprofessional. He must realize that there are a ton of trolls out there who hate Nintendo and always will, who will simply take these lies and run with it! My guess is that Nicalis thought that by trolling Nintendo and their fans, it might create some free publicity.

In other words, Nintendo has essentially been swift-boated by a lazy, arrogant developer! Shame on them.

Well they aren't interested in releasing in Australia anyway, so it still looks like I'm going to pirate it on PC. Enjoy not getting a sale

@dumedum First off, Team Meat is completely separate from Nicalis. Second, they couldn't release it on WiiWare because of Nintendo's ridiculous file size limit. You really should know what you're talking about before saying these things.

Yea, sounds like a classic PICNIC error, or more accurately I guess, PICNIW (problem in chair, not in Wii U).

Binding of Issac is not a demanding game at all and even taking the Wii U's 'oh so difficult architecture' in mind, it should be able to run it properly with little effort if the person doing the port had enough ability to do so correctly.

I think he should just bite the bullet and either admit there's a different reason he can't be bothered putting the work in (possibly bad sales on the original? I don't know how it sold) or pass the port off to somebody who HAS the ability to properly port it. If he just admitted to there being another more genuine reason I would respect the guy a whole lot more for his decision in leaving Nintendo behind on this, but the "it won't work" and Vita comparison really don't float an actual justification.

I won't even get into the thing he said about the Vita. The man is clearly either a moron or just looking for excuses with any old nonsense he can throw out. I think most people have come to terms with how capable the Wii U actually is by now.

Tyrone Rodriguez is an even bigger troll than @Kirk.

@Peach64 you bring that assertion without presenting any evidence, which clearly puts you on the same grounds as your fellow "ignorant" persons.

Think about any number of indie studios which are able to develop for Nintendo, with their implicit help which is the whole point of developing for a certain console. You expect to have a learning experience.

Looks like it could run on the 3DS never mind the Wii U... really crappy attitude too.

He should probably think about hiring someone who knows something about computers seeing as he can't get a game that could run in a browser to work on a game console capable of 1080p 60fps. I'd be terrified if I ever saw his code.

I am glad I have yet to purchase half of this game from these guys.

@Peach64 You're being ignorant. The guy said the problem was that the Wii U wasn't powerful enough for the game, no better than a Vita, which is a blatant lie.

Yeah...no. I call BS.
As much as i love the game itself, but even the PC version had some stability issues with the recent add-on.
This is just another form of saying "we cant pull it off"

Lol

I'm not going to debate whether the Wii U is any more powerful than the Vita--I hardly care, anyway--but the excuse that the system is not capable of handling a 2D rouguelike is pathetic. Apparently the guy has upset some PC gamers with his attitude, too, based off some things I've read on Steam. And I'm not surprised, personally, as Nicalis has not impressed me in the past.

Lol. You guys get so pissed off about the smallest things.

Actually, he's right when he says the Wii U isn't much more powerful then the Vita, kinda sad to admit, but it's true. Hope for it on the Nx?

Aaaaand cracked copy downloaded

The Vita isn't even half as powerful as a Wii U. Also, you would be stupid to port a game on the Vita since it has an install base much smaller than the Wii U. The only people who buy the Vita are Japenese, and Japan doesn't play stuff like this.

And considering the buggy mess that his game was on New 3DS, I'm glad it isn't on Wii U.

@Peach64
"When sales are so low"
Yeah, let's port it to Vita. That thing prints money!

@Nintendo_Ninja 'Yeah, let's port it to Vita. That thing prints money!'

Digitally probably, yeah.

Looks at Bayonnetta, Fast Racing Neo, Smash Bros. 4, Mario Kart, and tons of other visually impressive games
...
Looks at Afterbirth
...
...
...
I get people don't want to put games on WiiU for monetary or technical misunderstanding, but after seeing the amazing visuals on Wii U already that severly outclass Binding of Isaac...it just makes tweets like this look foolish.

Don't even know anything of this game and not the slightest bit interested, but regardless if it could run on Wii U or not, it's clear that those devs are lying trying to excuse themselves. Just look at the footage for "Zelda U", and tell me that that's something close to what the Vita can run. I highly doubt that.

If this is too hard for him, maybe he should go back to making flash games.

The guys a muppet

@Nintendo_Ninja i will only buy it, if its released on vita

Professionals can do it well, Lego, Toys to Life, Most Wanted U are all ports that look 100 times better than anything by this company. Plus there's every 3rd party exclusive and 1st party title.
And there's other indy titles that are great.

how is this newgrounds flash game not working on the wii u

@Mus1cLov3r It doesn't mock religion. All it shows is that religion has positives and negatives.

@donniedarkenson The first game was flash, this is the remake

@Monado_III Umm rebirth can't be ran in a browser, it's not flash

@MasterWario We play it because we enjoy it obviously -.-

People need to calm down, NICALIS is still trying to make it work

@SanderEvers Actually no. The Vita's CPU is quite underpowered. How much? The Wii U runs on a tri-core PPC running at 1.2Ghz. The Vita runs on a quad-core ARM running at maximum 444Mhz. That's even less than the n3DS, which has a quad-core ARM running at 804Mhz.

Tyrone is a PR person, he doesn't know anything about programming or system architecture. If he did he would realize how idiotic his statement is.

@Zombo Perhaps, but these tweets aren't doing him any favors.

It does amaze me that a game like Binding of Isaac requires so much horsepower. If the Wii U can handle Bayonetta 2 ar 60 FPS, I'm pretty sure it can handle Afterbirth if the programmers half know what they're doing.

Either way, I hate those attention-whoring developers that try to stir up drama on twitter. Makes me kinda glad I didn't buy his game.

@Peach64 I see where you're coming from, but what you said really has nothing to do with the matter at hand. Tyrone didn't talk about the troubles of porting to Wii U, he talked about sheer power.

Not enough power or not enough programming skills?

@Zombo it looks the exact same

I have a Vita and love it, but no way is it anywhere near the Wii U in terms of capability.

@donniedarkenson no they don't, go look up am isaac comparison between the original and rebirth. The original doesn't have the 16 bit aesthetic

@accc You got that backwards lol

@Zombo lol for god sakes they are the same. most of the differences are like, "we drew it nicer" or "we ran the original flash drawings through photoshop mosaic tool to create the illusion of 16-bit", which has nothing to do with processing power. they added a neat lighting effect.

it looks like a flash game and can't run on the system that runs xenoblade, hyrule warriors, bayonetta

So Wii U can do Xenoblade Chronicles X, but can't handle The Binding of Isaac? What an absolute lying assh*le this Tyrone Rodriguez is. If you're too lazy or stupid to do it just say that, but don't expect Nintendo fans to swallow this bullsh*t.

Yeah, this is a 2D sprite based dungeon crawler. I'm pretty sure if someone who actually knew a thing or two about programming was working on this it'd probably be playable on the PS1.

@Spin completely this.

I don't mind waiting for an NX port, but I would like a port of Cave Story+ on Wii U, with Widescreen mode from the 3DS eShop version, and the Machine Gun challenge from the Steam version, and maybe even more challenges for other weapons, like Snake, Bubbler, and Fireball. Nicalis has no problems making a dozen ports for that game anyways (as opposed to other games, like Binding of Isaac), so what's one more?

@Raptor78 sadly attic attac is a Ultimate play the game title which later became Rare. All Rare and Ultimate games are owned my Microsoft.

Wait - I didn't know this game was so graphically elaborated that it needs PS4-like power to run properly?

I'm sorry but if you don't want to support a particular system at least make it seem like you've tried to come up with a reasonable excuse. X'D He should go work for EA.

Mreh. I've used a vita. It's nice, but you won't see Sm4sh or Watch dogs or anything like that hit the system. The wii U isn't a powerhouse in raw power, but it DOES have the highest rate of 60 FPS titles in a world heavily favoring 30FPS stuff and for someone like me who favors frame rate over graphics any day of the week it fills my needs. Anything it doesn't handle I just grab on steam or occasionally pick up an old sandbox from the pawn for the PS3.

Also though, I really struggle to believe that this expansion would be an issue for the wii U. The original game came out a few years back and doesn't seem too intensive on PC. I won't pretend to know more than he does on the subject, because I don't, but it's one of those cases where I just struggle to believe power is the issue when it's a 2d top-down.

Should probably stop buying Nicalis games then, since this guy is too lazy to bring certain games to Wii U. Having never played the game this might be an uneducated statement to make, but it doesn't look like a game which requires a lot of power. I mean the graphics look like they were done in photoshop, which is by no means a bad thing but what's all the power being used on instead?!

While I agree it does sound ridiculous that it could handle Bayonetta 2 and not Binding of Isaac, I think it's comical that this site thinks every developer that doesn't want to bring their games to Wii U (you know, 99 percent of them) are big meanies and bullies and lazy! Only NINTENDO are the good guys! It's comical at this point.

Now I have absolutely no idea how powerful a Wii U or the Vita really are and I really don't care. I do imagine the Wii U could handle it given enough time but I do believe it runs on an entirely different system than the PS4 and Xbox One meaning it is significantly more difficult to port there. But I am sure they could and Tyrone is an ass.
The thing about Afterbirth is that is that it adds even more insanity to the base game. The new Greed Mode in particular is much more resource demanding than anything in the base game as a lot more enemies can be in the room at the same time than ever before. 20+ are very possible, each with their own AI, attacks and shadows. In addition to that you yourself can potentially fire hundreds of tears in just a few seconds which all have to be calculated separately which is obviously really demanding (they also have their own shadows). I am not exaggerating, hundreds of tears is literally possible as the DLC added even more options to gain highly powerful builds. Then there is stuff that could make them explode on contact or bounce away from enemies or split into more tears... or all of that at the same time.
Even stronger PCs can be brought down to their knees like that.

Excuse me for posting my screenshot here but consider this: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=560310329

That's the result of six bombs splitting of into 2-4 bombs each which all explode and release 10 huge DYNAMIC lasers EACH. At minimum this results in 120 lasers each with their own unique lightning effect having to be calculated by the game at the same time which is just below the game's limit of 128 tears at the same time (on the PC I might add). That puts a LOT of strain on the system.
No cheats involved, it's a completely legit combo (although the numbers on the left are from a little mod but it doesn't affect the game in any way)

People here judge too quickly from what they see without really understanding how things work. You really need to play it yourself for a while or at least watch videos from highly overpowered (but still possible) runs to get an idea how it all works. Hundreds of different calculations have to run at the same time. Lights, Shadows, gore (which is already toned in the non-PC versions), Fire, water, etc. all would have to be reworked or even cut which we all know would result in even more angry outcries.
I myself am greatly disappointing we likely won't see a Vita release and I wish they would just get their asses in gear.

And the original game (not Rebirth) was done in flash so it run like ass even on high-end PCs quickly enough.

Wasn't it the same excuse with Scott Pilgrim?
(Perhaps there really is more to it than meets the eye?)
If you look at his other tweets, you'll see that he hasn't given up just yet!
-Although, after all those jabs and threats to drop support (directed at him), I wouldn't blame him if he abandoned us altogether. .

Blaming the hardware when it could very well be the dev at fault isn't cool-igetit!
But people are being too harsh and certainly not helping matters..
(If you're truly interested in the game & miffed about his post-
Let him know that you'll only buy it on system of choice

@Samurairu Now it's just about how many games can be dumped put as quickly and effortlessly as possible.

Is this going to be a thing with smaller devs as well now?

That the hardware is belittled for games not running well?

first off why is a Nintendo mag put this bs out there. looking at the screenshot there is no way the wii u would struggle to run this when it runs bayonetta 2. hell Mario kart 8 looks better graphically than the game they are trying to say the wii u can't handle I call bs on this dev

These comments are embarrassing. The Binding of Isaac is easily in my top 20 games of all time, a true gem that- believe it or not- can't be fully appreciated in "20 minutes" or "an hour." It has always played perfectly for me on my PS4, which I've probably logged 100 hours. I hear a bunch of butthurt Nintendo fanboys talking smack about a development process they know very little about, especially when done by such a small team.

Sorry bro, but Bayonetta was a game released for the previous generation in X360 and PS3. The 2nd game doesn't perform different, so you're technically delusional if you think Bayonetta 2 is in the same standards of a major XOne or PS4 release. You're playing a game released this generation that performs like the previous generation games.

There is no "but it depends if the game is developed with the Wii U hardware in mind" argument. Wii U is a weaker machine in all possible aspects if you put it next to XOne and PS4.

@LetsGoRetro It costs a lot of time and money to downgrade and optimize a game for a weaker machine, y'know. Looking at the Wii U current situation on the market, no company may want to spend that much and don't obtain enough profit. The system is retiring soon, sales are getting worse, popularity is permanently damaged. Just like the Vita.

Don't forget the fact Nicalis was a strong partner in the early 3DS years woth Cave Story 3D and other indie ports developed for it. It's not a partnership problem, not a personal issue.

Nintendolife fanboyism is terrible these days. It also annoys me.

These Isaac games look like trash. The fact this guy is not capable to make them run on weaker hardware just proves how incompetent this guy is as a developer. The Vita or even the 3DS have plenty games that look better than this.

@donniedarkenson Ummm.. All the sprites arebrand new sprites, want proof? Go look at Isaac in the original and Isaac in rebirth, his proportions are different. Can a "filter" do that? Look at the actual room textures witch look completely different. Its not a "lighting effect" its the original Isaac remade from the ground up on a new engine. That is a fact period

@bitleman Its not the looks or graphics, those are irrelevant, its all the things behind the scenes witch you obviously don't understand.

Wii U: Tri-core PowerPC @1.24GHz

New 3DS: 4x ARM11 @ 804MHz

PS Vita: 4x ARM cortex A9 @ 444MHz

Putting aside the fact that all 3 consoles should realistically have zero problem running a flash game as BoI. It should also be noted that the homebrew SNES emulator on Vita actually runs worse than on New 3DS, much less Wii U.

This is a clear example of modern developers wimping out on the age old practice of optimization.

Game didn't interest me to be honest and if it's having performance issues looking like that which is hardly cutting edge.
I can only think poor optimisation

Play nice ~Santa

A bad workman always blames his tools...

It's easier to say the Wii U isn't powerful enough than to admit that you're too lazy/incompetent with the hardware. It's not much of a loss though as TBOI sold more because of controversy rather than actually being a good game.

Wow. It's amazing how developers don't know anything.

I hope this is a troll post like what EA did.

Some good old honesty. Well said.

An incredibly niche game on the slowest selling mainstream console in 15 years. Further evidence that, yeah, Nintendo pooched the Wii U with its stupidly cheap CPU. In comparison, even the PS3 and 360 dwarf its lacklustre performance. Going back to slow sales though: why optimize a game when no one is buying enough games to warrant the effort? It's funny to me, just how fast Nintendo fanboys get defensive about their terribly spec'd systems, and turn theor praise to scorn at the drop of a hat.

Guys, this game could run on Dreamcast.

Okay, so the dude's comments went too far; the Wii U could probably handle Afterbirth.

HOWEVER,

He did not say anything in a particularly rude fashion, and he is entitled to his opinion. I'm pretty disappointed in this community, lambasting someone just for stating something... Also, despite what everyone seems to think, just because BoI is Sprite based does NOT mean it could run on a "PSP" or "Dreamcast". BoI is an incredibly complex game with a LOT going on in the background-- you can have over 100 individual sprites on screen easily, EACH WITH THEIR OWN BEHAVIORAL PROGRAMMING. The game was written out of Flash because it was too complex for Flash as a language to handle. It hasn't been Flash-based since the original, and I openly laugh at anyone who's commented here saying "I'm a burgeoning developer, this game would be easy". It wouldn't.
This is also an incredibly highly reviewed game with a satisfied fan base. It's the gold standard for roguelikes. People claiming its bad are fighting against statistics.
Also, you won't play it based on religious content? Seriously? But you're fine with Xenoblades, or Castlevania, or Bayonetta, which are all chock-full of religious content?
I'm just shocked to see a Nintendo-based community turn viscious this quickly.

Tl;Dr: it could probably run on Wii U, probably couldn't on New 3DS (too much processing), BUT REGARDLESS people need to stop being mean to feel good about themselves.

@SahashraLA The Wii U is a bit more powerful than the 360 and PS3. I'm sure that if the Wii U was in a better sales position we'd get more games right...? On topic Iv'e heard terrible things about Nicalis.

@L8T no, it's the same guy same developer, like I said. Stop your nonsense. WiiWare had amazing games. They were just incompetent like always.

@dumedum NO it isnt lol but you're crazy

@FrankJaeger THANK YOU! ! PEOPLE HERE ARE SO STUPID OMFG

:B Well maybe I dunno, he shouldn't have had certain items synergize with each other, particularly Death Touch + Monstero's Lung + Polyphemus+ Sacred Heart. I almost freaking crashed my Vita with that combo which was the only time it happened. I'm more freaking mad that there hasn't even been a patch for all of the bugs in any of the ported versions. Sometimes it freezes while moving between rooms, sometimes I can't even pick up a trinket.

If this developer can't learn to optimize for a specific console and fix his poorly ported games, why is he even branching out???

@Zombo yes it is

https://twitter.com/tyronerodriguez/status/669329353126334464

They are making significant progress.

I wouldn't put much faith in a company like Nicalis in general. The games they are involved with have always bugs and take forever to be released. Also they have the worst track record of releasing anything in Europe.

I just hope 90's Arcade Racer does come out in Europe at the same time as in North America. It would be ridiculous otherwise as the dev is from Greece.

It also looks like Cave Story 3D eShop version is never coming out, it has been a few years already listed in the eShop, but no buy option.

@dumedum That was team meat, this is NICALIS

@Zombo yes and one half to team meat involed in developing this game.

Who friggin' cares. Seriously.

This is disheartening.

@Mus1cLov3r religion isn't something that should be exempt from mockery. It is purely beliefs in unproven claims which is harmful. Reality is a thing, come join it.

@Charnel013 I never said that religion should be exempt from mockery... All I said is that I won't be supporting a game that mocks a religion—there's a big difference, there. I don't see how believing in an unproven thing could be "harmful," but that really shouldn't be discussed on a gaming website.

@Mus1cLov3r Being divorced from reality is harmful. Understanding the reality you live in helps you make good decisions.

If people stopped believing in stupid things like gods, there would be less deaths and even less suicide bombers thinking they get a reward for killing themselves.

BoI isn't mocking religion anyway. Does the game have a crude humour? Sure. I don't recall it mocking any religion though. Maybe you played it more then me?

Anything can be discussed here. It isn't against the rules.

@Charnel013 It's a gaming forum; therefore, I am only gonna use it to talk about games. Maybe I've talked about other things in the past, but that was then, and this is now. Discussions about religions generally lead into arguments/bitterness—just look, you're being hateful right now. I disagree with your thoughts on religion, being a Christian myself, but I respect them—arguing over it is pointless; I've spent far too much time arguing over stupid things on the internet.

But of course I haven't played it more than you have; it'd be hard to play a game more than you (even if "more than you" would be just 5 minutes of play-time) when I've refused to support it. Plus, there are three (well, I guess it'd be two and a half) factors that have come up since my first comment here: 1) I've virtually lost all interest in games; and 2) The Blinding of Isaac is only on the e-shop, I believe; 3) it's also rated M, and I'm below the age of 18, so even if I wanted it, there's no way I'd be able to get it on the WiiU or New 3DS XL.

@Mus1cLov3r "Discussions about religions generally lead into arguments/bitterness—just look, you're being hateful right now."

I am not. I simply prefer people understanding reality and not promoting falsehoods. You have no evidence for your beliefs, never mind reasons why those beliefs ignore basic facts of reality. The game does not hate on ANY religion. Just because you state it does means nothing. Unless you have proof?

It's a shame people can't see past their blinders and see a great game for for what it is.

@Charnel013 Why no, I don't have proof for my beliefs: I have faith. Love me, hate me; agree with me or mock me—I don't care, and I'm not gonna argue about it. In Matthew 5:11, Jesus said: ""Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me," so I don't care if you mock me. May God bless you, even of you don't believe in Him—toodles.

@Mus1cLov3r Faith is believing in something without evidence, so I wouldn't go around saying that. It's willful ignorance at best.

Quoting a book that spouts the unclaimed facts brings nothing to the table, but it is telling of your rationality and logic.

Maybe your critical thinking is lacking in terms of understanding the game in question as well? You have come here stating Binding of Isaac is mocking your religion yet when asked for evidence you throw bible quotes out and state you are being hated on. Pathetic.

@Charnel013 You've mocked me my beliefs, and called me ignorant—that's hating on someone; but, as I've said I don't care. I personally believe that attacking someone for their beliefs is "pathetic," if anything is, but to each his own. Keep on, if you wish.

But the reason I've not shown any evidence that the game mocks Christianity is because, as I've also already said, I've never played it (I've underlined that because it seemed to have went over your head the first time); I've seen people say that it does, so I thought that it did. My bad.

I can think of lots of better things to do than get barked at by someone over the internet (like sleeping, which I guess I should do soon), so bye—for real, this time. I'll pray for you tonight, whether you care for it or not.

@Mus1cLov3r I have not mocked your beliefs. I have stated they are not true and that believing in false things is harmful. I do not hate you or anyone just because they believing bad things. There is a difference. I cannot hate you because I know very little about you. You promote ignorance, and evidence means nothing to you.

Those 2 things are definitely things I dislike, maybe even hate. But that doesn't mean I need to hate the person. They could just be misguided or have parents that didn't raise them to be critical thinkers. Who knows.

What I do know is you will talk shit about a game you know nothing of just because others have. If you cared about evidence that wouldn't of happened.

And now this is Happening...

Aaaaaaaand...??? Rlly Tyrone? RLLY??? Not much more powerful than a Vita?!? I am a total fan of the BOI series, but now your just stirring the hornet's nest. Anyone else agree with me?

I will eat a Carolina Reaper on a plate of steel if there is someone who doesn't think Tyrone is lazy and full of shit. HEELLOOO, YOU HAVE BRAIN TYRONE, Oh wait. Right. He DOESN'T have even the slightest bit of intelligence. At least, not unless he's pissing people off with lies.

Edmund, please! Just fire this guy already!!! And yes, I know that it's getting "better", but we just can't trust this guy!

@Charnel013 Yes, definetely the second one. Probably adopted at a Puppy Mill for stupid, shitty fags that think that they can get away with anything. Stupid dumbass... Not you Charnel013.

Ugh... Great. I sure love me an ongoing, Stupid, M.E.A.N.I.N.G.L.E.S.S., QUARRELSOME ARGUEMENT!!! Please, stop being so argumentative! Oh, and Joris, thank you for noticing. THIS IS A VIDEO GAME DISCUSSION, NOT A ARGUMENT TOPIC!!!

I'd rather have RABIES than listen to you two! Seriously!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go barf on pillow, shred the new, fresh, comfy, EXTREEMMELY expensive, leather couch, and go take a catnap and forget EVERYTHING that just happened. See ya.