Wii is Epic Mickey 2′s lead platform, HD versions not just “up-rezzed”

Epic Mickey 2 lead designer Warren Spector has revealed that the Wii is still the lead platform for the upcoming sequel, but the PC, PS3 and 360 versions won’t just be “up-rezzed” ports, instead using new assets.

The game is being developed by Junction Point on the Wii and Blitz games on 360 and PS3. Spector reasoned to Eurogamer that this would allow his team to focus on the Wii version while the other versions could also get full attention.

“One of the goals for the first game was to make a Wii game that had even other developers saying, ‘Holy cow! I didn’t know you could do that on a Wii.’ And so, at the end of the day, we decided we wanted to make the same game for all three platforms,” Spector said.
“And because we have Wii tech and Wii expertise and because we needed to build next-gen tech, which we didn’t have, we prototyped, essentially, on the Wii. And the next-gen versions are running about a month behind everything. Just recently, everything caught up, so now we’re running in lock step, making them simultaneous.
“If we come up with something in tuning the game at Junction Point on the Wii version we think will benefit the 360 and PS3 version, that gets integrated into the 360 and PS3 version. If the guys at Blitz working on the next-gen platforms come up with something that will benefit, it comes back the other way.”
In this sense, Spector suggested that the Wii is the real lead platform: ”I guess you could say the Wii is the lead platform, because we’re driving the creative on all three platforms. But really, it’s been a two-way street. They’re both feeding into each other,” he said.
“The power of the next-gen platforms allows us to do cool shader effects, higher resolution graphics, and more and better visual effects. It is the same game across all platforms, but graphically, the assets are not shared. We created all new assets for both next-gen platforms, so it isn’t just up-rezzed stuff.”
Of course, there’s also a 3DS Epic Mickey game inbound which is reportedly nothing like its console counterparts.