Electronic Arts clearly has no qualms about sticking it to struggling Nintendo after pulling back its support of the Wii U platform a few weeks prior to the E3 expo and opting to side fully with heavyweight brands Xbox and PlayStation. In their most recent comments to gaming source Joystiq, the publisher’s president Frank Gibeau has claimed EA Games will only resume working on content for Nintendo’s console when it becomes a ‘viable’ platform.
After red carding FIFA 14 on Wii U as well as a number of other lucrative franchises including EA Sports titles and games in the Star Wars series, Gibeau told the gaming website that Nintendo must ‘sell more boxes’ and somewhat sternly reaffirms the reason for the publishers withdraw of support stating “We’re a rational company, we go where the audience is. We publish games where we think we can make a great game and hit a big audience, and make money. That’s why we’re here, that’s why we have an industry.”
The company president goes on to suggest that EA Games gave Nintendo four titles including Madden, FIFA, Need for Speed and Mass Effect which were time dedicated conversions – not ‘schlocky ports’ – but without the Wii U consoles being shipped there is not a platform EA considers worthy of developing on.
EA hasn’t been beating around the bush when it comes to its opinions of Nintendo and what it considers serious limitations and these remarks follow development partner DICE’s failed attempts to apply the cutting edge Frostbite engine to the Wii U, which would allow for games like Battlefield 4 to run as smoothly as possible.
Blake Jorgensen, CFO of EA Games, recently told games site Polygon that they “are building titles for the Nintendo console” but he confesses “not anywhere near as many as we are for PS or Xbox”. He also does not reveal which future titles we can expect on the Wii U but after the exciting E3 showcase from EA last week Nintendo fans are likely to be rather disappointed by this never ending bad news.