SEGA - Wii U due out in Spring/Summer 2012, Aliens: Colonial Marines running on Wii U dev kit, Wii still important

A portion of a GameSpot interview with SEGA’s Alan Pritchard…

GS: Aliens: Colonial Marines was shown during the Wii U sizzle reel at Nintendo’s briefing on Tuesday. Is this game actually coming to the Wii U or was it just a prototype?

AP: Aliens: Colonial Marines for the Wii U was part of Nintendo’s briefing, so that was great. And Sega and Gearbox have been fortunate enough to be involved with Nintendo from the start. It was a prototype, but we do have it playing on the [Wii U] dev kit. We need to know more about the exact launch timing [of the Wii U] and if it is something that will work for our Aliens franchise. Is it something that is going to be simultaneous? To be up there with the other first- and third-party tech demos…it’s good that we’re part of that thinking for the platform.

It was interesting that Nintendo didn’t really talk about the Wii [during its briefing], which is obviously a platform that is still important for most third-party publishers.

We have some big titles [for the Wii]. Mario & Sonic is a semi-first-party game so that’s going to be important for us this year. We do have some Wii games left in development, and we do have some Wii product in our product road map. We do have some future stuff. How the Wii lands compared to PS2…I don’t think we know though about that yet. They have potential future price drops up their sleeve. But it does need new content, as well as a catalog to drive the new hardware through. Obviously, it’s going to be big for this Christmas, and I think the Wii will be a very viable platform through next Christmas.

GS: Will Sonic Generations be released for the Wii U?

AP: The timing just doesn’t work. Generations releases this November, and the Wii U is coming out next spring/summer. I think one of the things we don’t have to do, or reduce where possible, is we don’t want to port games. I think if there’s going to be a Sonic game for the Wii U, it needs to be built from the ground up. It’s more likely that it would be a separate stand-alone installment or in conjunction with a multiplatform release in the future. But to bring out Generations on a platform six or eight months after we release PS3, 360, and 3DS probably won’t be the best strategy.