Below is the press release on the plans of Brisbane developer, Wildfire Studios, and publisher, Gameshastra, to bring the highly polished and extremely fun Tumblebugs game onto Nintendo's WiiWare service. It's always interesting to hear of more local developers jumping into that space, and what's also interesting to see is the download count that a casual game like Tumblebugs managed to accumulate on the PC. 40+ million downloads!? That sure is a hefty lot.
Press Release
Today Hyderabad and Los Angeles based Gameshastra announces an agreement to create the Wii version of Brisbane based Wildfire Studios' wildly popular and critically acclaimed Tumblebugs franchise.
Since first launching in 2005, Tumblebugs and the recently released sequel Tumblebugs 2, have generated 40+ million downloads.
“We are strong believers in console based casual games,” says Prakash Ahuja, CEO of Gameshastra, “especially given the recent transformation of consoles from historically teen focused gaming devices to now becoming family entertainment hubs in many living rooms across the globe. We are very focused on titles that satisfy this new, broad demographic.”
Darren Baker, CEO of Wildfire Studios says “We enjoyed working with Gameshastra on Tumblebugs 2 PC, and are excited to collaborate again to bring our games to the emerging realm of console casual gaming. The broad consumer appeal and high production values of Wildfire’s titles make them a natural fit for the console space.”
“After working closely with the Wildfire team to create background art for Tumblebugs 2 we realized the game was a fantastic WiiWare candidate,” Rahul Sandil, VP of Sales at Gameshastra says. “The key to a successful Wii port is the ability to expand the title to take advantage of the unique Wiimote input system, and we feel we have came up with a very innovative design that combines the regular ‘shoot-to-match 3’ experience with some very unique Wii specific mechanics.”
The game is expected to be available on Nintendo’s WiiWare service in the fall of 2008.
About Wildfire
Australian based Wildfire Studios continues to grow its profile as a preeminent developer of casual games. Founded in 1995, Wildfire gained immediate recognition with the launch of the best selling and critically acclaimed pinball simulator Balls of Steel. The company has now released some 15 casual games across multiple platforms.
Wildfire’s games are distinguished by technical excellence, the highest quality graphics and attention to detail. The games are available on all the major game portals including Yahoo!, Big Fish Games, RealNetworks, Oberon, MSN and worldwide retail outlets.
About Gameshastra
Gameshastra, India’s largest game services provider, operates a state-of-the-art Game Services production center in Hyderabad, India for game development, game testing and game art production for the Wii, PS/2, PS/3, PC, Mac, Web, PSP and Nintendo DS. For more information visit www.gameshastra.com
Oh wow, awesome news.
Oh wow, awesome news. Tumblebugs was great, I hope Tumblebugs 2 does even better. Go Wildfire! Also - could this be the first locally developed game to come out on WiiWare? It would be neat to hear some more about that.