Retro City Rampage To Hit Xbox Live Before WiiWare

Retro City Rampage developer Brian Provinciano reports that a newly-announced Xbox Live version of his game should hit the download service next summer, months before a Fall release for the WiiWare version. The game, which was originally slated to hit WiiWare before the end of the year, has been delayed in order to add more missions and playable characters, Provinciano told Destructoid, as well as box-Live-exclusive content including a challenge mode. The decision to expand to Microsoft's download service was a financial one, said Provinciano, who has reportedly cashed in a portion of his retirement saving to continue development of the game. "In order to continue making these games and not have to start flipping burgers after Retro City Rampage is done, it needed to be multi-platform," he said. The title's development progression mirrors that of Super Meat Boy, which was initially announced as a WiiWare title back in January 2009. The Xbox Live Arcade version, announced just over a year later, ended up coming out a few weeks before the WiiWare version, and included console-exclusive downloadable content as well. Many if not most WiiWare titles have struggled to attract attention from gamers and the press, thanks partly to lax promotion by Nintendo. Nintendo has also faced criticism for setting a minimum sales threshhold that independent developers must meet before making any money off WiiWare releases. For his part, Provinciano told Destructoid he has "done everything possible to avoid disappointing [Wii owners]" and "apologizes for the delay" to the Wii version of the game.