Beautiful Katamari

Namco-Bandai’s tidy em’ up is both perfect and ill-suited to the Wii in equal measure. On the one hand, its broad appeal and colorful visuals seem like a nice match, on the other hand it is difficult to see how its defining dual analogue controls would make the transition. At first it seemed the developers were going to substitute tilt for dual analogue, but since that point the game’s release date has slipped into limbo and very little has been heard.

At the 2007 Tokyo Game Show, designer Jun Morikawa hinted that Beautiful Katamari would not actually be released for the Wii at all, but that the next game in series would turn up on the console. It seems likely that rather than trying to port the existing hi-def version that was made with the 360 in mind, the next game in the series will be developed with the Wii in mind from the very beginning. Namco Bandai’s support for the Wii is arguably the strongest of all Japanese third-parties, so it seems likely that Katamari will make an appearance on the Wii sooner rather than later.

Chances of Release: 20%