EA appears to have effectively pulled out of Wii U game development after admitting that it currently has no games in development for the Nintendo console.
EA spokesperson Jeff Brown has told Kotaku that “We have no games in development for the Wii U currently,” which means that there are no new Wii U versions of FIFA, Battlefield, Madden, or any of publishing giant’s other hit game franchises in the works.
This comes a mere six months after the Nintendo Wii U launched with several EA titles including FIFA 13 and Mass Effect 3, and less than two years after the company entered an “unprecedented partnership” with Nintendo to produce games for the console.
It’s worth noting that Brown did not rule out possible future collaborations with Nintendo, but it appears as if there’ll be no EA games on the troubled Wii U for the foreseeable future.
This confirmation follows the news earlier in the month that the Wii U was unable to handle the Frostbite 3 engine developed by Battlefield developer DICE. The company and its technology are owned by EA, and as many as 15 upcoming Electronic Arts titles will be powered by the advanced game engine.
Indeed, the company ran into severe troubles trying to get the current generation Frostbite 2 engine to run on Nintendo’s latest console, let alone the next gen version.
It seems as if the Nintendo Wii U’s relatively meager specs – which are much closer to the Xbox 360 and PS3 than the Xbox Infinity and PS4 – allied to disappointing sales have cost Nintendo the support of one of the biggest game publishers in the business.
It’s worth remembering that
Of course, Nintendo is in a much stronger position now than Sega was in the late nineties, but this remains troubling news for fans of the house of Mario.
Check out how many Wii U games make our list of the best games of 2013 so far.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
