Devil's Third Launch in Question During Change of Publisher

Conflicting reports suggest that Nintendo of America may no longer be publishing Dead or Alive creator Tomonobu Itagaki's Devil's Third.

This morning, Siliconera confirmed that Nintendo of America will no longer be publishing Valhalla Game Studios' Devil's Third, and that it will be published "by a publisher Siliconera readers are quite familiar with." Meanwhile, Kotaku claims this may not be true. Even though the game has been scheduled for an August release in Japan and Europe, actual updates about Devil's Third's development have been scare. For an anticipated Wii U game, we were legitimately surprised to see that it wasn't featured anywhere during the latest Nintendo Direct presentation during E3 2015. It was also absent during Nintendo's developmental Treehouse footage.

Ever since leaving Tecmo six years ago, Itagaki has been working on Devil's Third, which was originally going to be developed in a partnership from the now defunct THQ. During the game's development, it has changed engines multiple times, and there hasn't been much revealed in regards to actual footage. While the House of Mario picked up the rights to publishing the game, its absence from E3 during a time where Nintendo is scrounging for Wii U titles to fill in the void left by The Legend of Zelda's delaying has us fearing for the worst.

As usual, Nintendo representatives responded with the standard response of “Nintendo doesn’t comment on rumors or speculation," offering little information on whether or not Devil's Third is still on track for its Japanese and European releases next month. You would think they would say something along the lines of it still being scheduled to launch, but they didn't. Rumor has it that aged visuals, underachieving gameplay and poor frame rates are discouraging Nintendo from publishing it (as if that stopped major publishers in the past).

Nevertheless Itagaki had the following to say on his official Facebook: