Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath Comes To PS Vita Next Month

PlayStation Vita owners won't have to wait much longer for Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath HD, as developer Just Add Water confirms that the HD remake should be arriving by mid-November 2012 (via Eurogamer). The final date hinges on when the game is sent off to be certified for release by Sony, something which studio boss Stewart Gilray says should happen in two weeks.

Unfortunately for Xbox 360 users, there's still no movement on the possibility of an Xbox Live Arcade release for Stranger's Wrath HD. While the new 2GB cap for XBLA games is just above what the Oddworld game would require -- a previous point of contention between Just Add Water and Microsoft -- there are now other factors preventing an Xbox release. Gilray isn't exactly clear on what those factors are, but series creator Lorne Lanning suggests that it relates to the way third-party publishing works on XBLA.

"Microsoft's model says if you're not pimping our box product you can't be a publisher on our system," he said. "You have to go through one of them in our closed network. So even though we pay for the games ourselves, even though we bring tens of millions of dollars in previous content to the game, even though we would deliver a final product that they don't have to spend a penny on, they're making it a requirement that we give away 10, 20 per cent of that at least to a publisher for doing nothing except having access to their platform."

That's just one side of the story, of course. We learned only yesterday that the HD remake Oddworld: Abe's Odyssee New N' Tasty! is headed to XBLA (along with other platforms), so it's not like Just Add Water is completely closed out. All fans can do is hope for an Arcade release at some point. In the meantime, I'll be playing Stranger's Wrath HD on my Vita and loving every minute of it.