Nintendo discuss why Xenoblade Chronicles wasn’t remastered for Wii U

With Xenoblade Chronicles X releasing later this year, and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD‘s success, it came as a surprise that Nintendo didn’t choose to remaster the original for Wii U.

It instead became the first New Nintendo 3DS exclusive and every bit as great as it was on Wii – Nintendo reasoning that their decision meant that, on portable, players can more readily chip away at the game’s lengthy completion time.

“Xenoblade Chronicles features a ton of depth and volume, something that earned it a lot of high praise from the people who played the Wii release,” a Nintendo SPD representative shared with GameSpot.

“I think a lot of people began to take an interest in this game after hearing all of that praise, too. However, it’s not unheard of for this game to take around 100 hours just to complete it normally, so even if people take an interest, I think some of them would give up the idea of playing it, thinking to themselves: ‘No way do I have the free time to sit in front of a TV and play this game for 100 hours.'”

They continued, “Even if we remastered it for Wii U, my concern was that people like that would still avoid playing it. Remaking it for a portable system, however, will let them play it whenever they like, at home or outside, and we thought that would lead to more people trying it out. We considered making it for the original Nintendo 3DS at first, but if we wanted to achieve nearly the same quality as you saw on the original Wii version, the New Nintendo 3DS XL became all but required.”

Xenoblade Chronicles 3D is now available exclusively for New Nintendo 3DS / 3DS XL worldwide.