EA spokesperson, Jeff Brown last week made it public that the publisher had no games in development for the Wii U. Given the fact consoles lower than expected sales and hesitancy on the part of game developers to work on the platform, the news was like a nail in the coffin in the Japanese console’s struggle for survival.
However, there seems to be a ray of hope for the struggling console, as other EA employees have assured that publisher may have a few games in store for the Wii U. Giving a speech at the Stifel Nicolaus 2013 Internet, Media and Communications Conference, EA’s chief financial officer Blake Jorgenson offered some clarification in relation to Brown’s comments earlier. “We are building titles for the Nintendo console, but not anywhere near as many as we are for PS or Xbox.”
While not the same positive response as Nintendo would have wished for, it’s still a healthy response. Nevertheless, there are still a lot of questions that are being raised as to kind of games EA will be making for the console. DICE’s Frostbite 3 engine, which will likely be the basis on which future EA games would be released, doesn’t run well on the Wii U. This very strongly supports the argument that many next-gen EA games running on Frostbite engine will not be making it to the console.
While Jorgenstern has backed away from the thoughts that EA might be running away from the Wii U completely, he still acknowledges the fact that next-gen consoles like the PS4 and Xbox One are the publisher’s number one priority. This once again solidifies the fact that EA doesn’t have too much confidence in Nintendo’s console. EA recently made a statement that sales of the Wii U version of FIFA 13 were so poor, it won’t be launching the FIFA 14 on the Wii U, and the same goes for Madden 25.
In short, we can sense that EA might not have completely abandoned the Wii U, but it’s certainly moved beyond the “unprecedented partnership” with Nintendo that it promised two years ago.
Source: EscapistMagazine