THQ clears up comments made by Metro: Last Light developer about the Wii U's CPU being 'horrible' and 'slow'

A THQ spokesperson has clarified comments made by 4A Games' chief technical officer, Oles Shishkovtsov, in which he described the Wii U's CPU as "horrible" and "slow" and said that developing Metro: Last Light for the console could potentially be detrimental to the overall quality of the game.

The comments were originally made in an interview with NowGamer, but a representative of 4A Games and Metro: Last Light, Huw Beynon, has clarified the comments, saying that just because the game is CPU-intensive doesn't mean the development team couldn't get around it.

In a statement to Eurogamer, Beynon said:

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.

I think that what frustrates me about the way the story's been spun out is that there's been no opportunity to say, 'Well, yes, on that one individual piece maybe it's not as... maybe his opinion is that it's not as easy for the way that the 4A engine's been built as is the others.

What it doesn't go on to look at is to say that, you know, we could probably get around that. We could probably get Metro to run on an iPad if we wanted, or on pretty much anything. 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.

But I understand that there's a real appetite in the media at the moment because the Wii U is a hot topic to spam some stories that are going to attract a lot of links if they present it in a certain way."

Beynon said that bringing Metro: Last Light to the Wii is "certainly possible", but it would require a dedicated team and dedicated effort, which could potentially negatively impact development of the game on other consoles.