EA’s Nonexistent Plan for Wii U Sheds Light on Nintendo’s Developer Woes
EA Games, one of the largest game developers/publishers, has announced that currently, there are no games in development for the Wii U, Nintendo’s latest game console that has yet to capture the hearts of gamers.
Wii U, though powerful as a game console, seems to be lacking some components that gamers and developers are looking for. Hardcore gamers are more inclined to purchasing either the Xbox 360 or the PlayStation 3, and some developers have aired their frustrations over Nintendo, stating that the console maker is hard to work with.
EA uses Frostbite 3 game engine in creating their games, and the company claims the engine does not run on the Wii U, thus creating games for the console is quite an impossible task at the moment. EA delivers popular franchises such as Madden, NHL, FIFA, Battlefield, Mass Effect, Need for Speed, Dragon Age, The Sims and recently announced that it will be handling development of future Star Wars game franchise.
So what does this announcement mean for Nintendo? Joining Kristin Feledy in this morning’s NewsDesk is NewsDesk Director of Production Mark Zamora to give his Breaking Analysis on EA’s announcement.
According to Zamora, stating that EA currently has no Wii U games in development doesn’t mean that it is completely abandoning the platform, but it does mean that it will take a year, at least, to see a new EA game come out for the Wii U since game development takes quite some time. Losing EA could spell disaster for Nintendo and could further affect the sales of Wii Us which are already doing bad in the market.
“Wii Us aren’t moving because there are no games. Not even Nintendo has released a game in a long time,” Zamora stated. “In order to move consoles, it needs to have games. It needs more games than just Mario, Zelda, all the flagship titles that we know we’re gonna get.
“So what does this mean for Nintendo? It means we’re not getting games from one of the biggest game publishers out there and that’s very, very troubling for the future of the console,” Zamora added.
This could also mean other game developers could drop out of creating titles for Wii U, but Zamora stated that it should be noted that EA is not the first one to do this; other developers have stated that Nintendo is hard to work with, while some independent game developers say otherwise. Wii Us future may soon rely on indie game titles rather than popular ones.
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