Yooka-Laylee Release Date Revealed
By Brad Jones 14 December 2016
Playtonic Games announces the release date for Yooka-Laylee, and confirms that the game won’t see a release on the Wii U as a result of “unforeseen technical issues.”
Playtonic Games’ spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie, Yooka-Laylee, proved to be an enormous crowdfunding success on Kickstarter last year, reaching its initial goal of £175,000 in less than an hour. Now, the studio has revealed that backers will only have to wait a few months longer to get their hands on the game.
In a blog post published yesterday, Playtonic Games confirmed that Yooka-Laylee will launch on April 11, 2017. However, the announcement also contained some bad news for anyone eagerly anticipating the opportunity to play the game on Nintendo hardware.
As many backers have expected for a while, Yooka-Laylee will not be released for the Wii U, despite the console being among the choices offered as part of the Kickstarter campaign. The team maintains that “unforeseen technical issues” make the Wii U port an impossibility, and states that backers will get the opportunity to switch their pledge to another version of the game.
However, it’s not all doom and gloom for those who were looking forward to reliving the days of playing Banjo-Kazooie on the N64. Yooka-Laylee will still reach Nintendo hardware, but this version of the game might take a little longer to release than the others.
Playtonic is apparently working “very closely” with Nintendo in an attempt to bring Yooka-Laylee to the Switch. Backers who initially selected the Wii U version as part of their donation to the Kickstarter campaign will be able to upgrade to this version of the game when the studio reveals more details about the port next year.
There will no doubt be many disappointed Wii U owners who were planning to play Yooka-Laylee on the console. However, it’s difficult to fault Playtonic for the decision; even without knowledge of the technical issues that affected development, it’s clear that Nintendo has all but abandoned the Wii U in favor of the upcoming Switch.
Still, this is great news on the whole for anyone looking forward to the game. We finally have a firm release date after last year’s delay, and the fact that pre-orders are now open means that anyone can get their hands on the Toybox preview that was previously distributed to Kickstarter backers.
The game is now just a few months away. So, here’s hoping it can live up to the hype.
Yooka-Laylee will release for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC on April 11, 2017. More details on the Nintendo Switch version will be made available next year.
