Teslagrad enjoyed its biggest success on Wii U

Developer Rain Games has revealed that it was the Wii U version of its game Teslagrad that was the most successful.

The puzzle platformer was between 2013 and 2015 released on a myriad of platforms, including PC, PS3, PS4, Vita and, most recently, Xbox One. But it was Nintendo’s machine that delivered the biggest results.

There was not many titles released [for Wii U], comparatively,” CEO Peter Wingaard Meldahl told Gamasutra. Indie titles actually got good visibility on the platform.

Nintendo has this split where two games are the entire top of the store and we were one of those two games for two weeks. That wouldn’t have been the case on any other platform, and that helped a lot. We got as much visibility as when they released as Hyrule Warriors, which actually we shared a place with twice, and that meant an enormous amount, the support from Nintendo itself.

There’s also the fact of course that the title has a lot of its audience on that particular platform because if you are looking for games like that you are probably a fan of Nintendo and those kind of titles. So if you have a Nintendo device you are more likely to enjoy at least the aesthetic this game’s going for.”

In a world where getting your game in front of people is often the biggest challenge, however, it was the eShop support that proved the most telling.

It is more important to be visible than have the biggest target audience be on the platform,” Meldahl added. The amount of people, for example, that are on Steam is enormous. No-one’s complaining about that, they’re complaining about the fact you can’t get visibility on it. It’s almost impossible.

You’re not, in all probability, ever going to expand to the entire audience for a game, you’re never going to reach user saturation, where everyone who would have liked your indie game or played is then already has it. It’s just a question of reaching them. So the fact there are fewew people on a console and fewer potential customers doesn’t necessarily matter if you can actually reach the customers that are there, or they don’t have too many equivalent options that can go for.”