Nintendo's upcoming home console, the Wii U, is still quite away off from official release, but it's clear that the company is putting all of its focus on Wii U's development and promotion and as such, the Wii has gradually been losing steam for a long, long time. Titles are becoming fewer and fewer, arguably nonexistent to most games, with the last blockbuster release being Skyward Sword outside of the more recent Mario Party 9. But the system's WiiWare service has been suffering even more, to the point where a few indie developers have given up on releasing games on it.

Indie developer Nicalis was originally planning to release their game, called La-Mulana, in the western hemisphere on WiiWare, after their initial release of the game on PC back in 2008 and an updated release in June of last year on WiiWare in Japan. However, they felt that the number of people who regularly use WiiWare has decreased significantly from its prime in 2008-2009, and that it would be "near-impossible" to sell a significant number of games on it.

La-Mulana is a side-scrolling 2D action platformer, in which the player controls an Indiana Jones-esque character, exploring various ruins and jungles for... something. It isn't clearly defined what in the trailer, beyond something about a seal being broken and "she" descending to the Earth. You can make your own judgements by viewing the trailer below, which showed that the game was slated to appear here in winter of 2009.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAsDRIF25SE

Nicalis founder Tyrone Rodriguez said that, with the WiiWare sales being almost "non-existent" and Nintendo's focus on the Wii U, he simply made the necessary judgement call, and didn't bear any ill will to Nintendo as a whole. Although this is another game of a Nintedo platform not offering good support for third parties, something the Wii entirely failed to do throughout its lifecycle.

The Wii slate looks to be rather dry right now, but if you're looking Xenoblade Chronicles is out (see our review here), the Kirby 20th anniversary collection is coming soon, along with a re-release of Pikmin 2.

Source: Eurogamer