Straight Right games, Australia’s premiere (only?) Wii U developer, has offered up a hint as to what their next title for Nintendo’s tablet controller console will be.
Australian studio Straight Right is a real up and comer in the console development world. Headed by Tom Crago, formerly of Tantalus Interactive, Straight Right has yet to release an original IP hit. In fact, outside of the iOS version of Electronic Arts’ Shift 2: Unleashed, Straight Right hasn’t released a single game. The studio is working on multiple projects for Wii U, though, one of which is a launch title of Mass Effect 3.
As we reported in September, Crago said, “We made a number of bets on the Wii U, so we’re certainly hoping that the platform comes strongly out of the gate. We’ve got two other titles in development. One of them is original, our own IP, and another is based on another big franchise that will come out in 2013. It’s a big title and you will have hears of it.”
Given the company’s ties to Electronic Arts, it seemed probable that Straight Right would be working on another Wii U port for that company, likely one of its key 2013 titles like Dead Space 3. Turns out that Straight Right’s next Wii U port will be for none other than Square-Enix.
A NeoGAF forum member spotted a LinkedIn profile for Straight Right’s technical project manager Chris Slater, who joined the studio in June. The current project Slater is working is “porting a triple-A Square-Enix game to the yet-to-be-released Wii U platform.”
Square-Enix is a popular, prolific publisher with a number of triple-A releases under its belt over the past two years. This year alone it’s released, and will release, Final Fantasy XIII-2, Sleeping Dogs, and Hitman: Absolution. The company’s development history, though, does help narrow down what property Straight Right is likely porting.
Square’s Japanese development business is wholly segregated from its western studios that were previously part of the publisher Eidos. Since development of the Final Fantasy series never leaves Square’s internal studios in Japan, and that series is the only remaining console triple-A franchise remaining in the company’s portfolio, upcoming games like Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII are out of the running.
Crago did say that his other Wii U port project is a 2013 game too, meaning that the most likely candidate is Tomb Raider. Developer Crystal Dynamics has often relied on outside developers to complete work on its Tomb Raider games for other platforms. Tomb Raider: Legends, Anniversary, and Underworld all had ports developed by Nixxes Software, not Crystal Dynamics. Since Straight Right already has experience with Wii U, that makes them an ideal choice to port the new Lara Croft adventure.
