La-Mulana WiiWare canceled due to shrinking sales base

The long-delayed game La-Mulana has been canceled for WiiWare, after publisher Nicalis made the executive decision not to publish on the platform. The publisher called it a "tough call," but says that WiiWare simply hasn't retained the market power that it had when development of the game began.

"The decision to cancel publishing of La-Mulana was a tough call, but waiting two years for Nigoro to finish development has made it near impossible to sell sufficient units on Wii," Nicalis' Tyrone Rodriguez told Go Nintendo. "The WiiWare market has a fraction of the players from 2008. The window for release and success of software on the platform ended in 2009 and took a very steep decline. Players have moved onto other digital download platforms."

Rodriguez says as the developer's first console project, Nigoro may have spent too much time working on the DLC for Japan, which was never approved in Nintendo's US or EU submission process. "With the Wii U in the not too distant future and WiiWare sales almost non-existent, I had to make a call today," he said. "I wish them the best. They're good game developers and good guys."

When Nigoro announced in December that the game would be coming in 2012, it already had to respond to rumors of cancellation on the WiiWare service. "But no matter what, La-Mulana will be released on WiiWare," a blog entry said at the time. "We don't want any speculation suggesting otherwise."

Paired with that announcement was word that the game would be releasing on PC as well. A new blog entry from last week claims that those plans are still progressing steadily. "We have almost finished developing it," the blog notes. "Debuggers are in the middle of testing. In the meantime, we are discussing where and how to sell it."