Electronic Arts' "unprecedented partnership" with Nintendo was already seeming a little lukewarm when it was revealed EA's Madden franchise would be skipping the Wii U in 2013. Now Kotaku reports that EA may be putting some distance between itself and the struggling console.
EA's contributions to the Wii U to date have consisted of ports of titles from other platforms, including Mass Effect 3, Need for Speed Most Wanted and FIFA. According to Kotaku, these ported games -- timed to shore up the Wii U's launch window -- constitute the fulfillment of its 2011 partnership with Nintendo announced at E3.
At that time, then-CEO of EA John Riccitiello had joined Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata on stage of the Nintendo press conference and told E3 attendees of EA's commitment to the Wii U.
What Nintendo's new console delivers speaks directly to the players of EA Sports and EA Games. Nintendo's new console will produce brilliant high-definition graphics and gameplay opportunities. We look forward to seeing great EA content on this new platform.
That was then. And while it is unclear whether EA will return to the Wii U at a later point, for now, it appears the honeymoon is over.
You know, I know where half this conversation is going to go: EA's just doing what makes business sense. No one professional would walk away from real business at the table if there was real potential. Grudges and pettiness are imagined. Armchair analysts don't know what they're talking about - we don't know the real situation.
Let me head this off right here. Huge businesses have done all these things. Yes, they really can be that dickish. They really will cut off the nose to spite the face. They really will sabotage their own 'efforts' to justify a larger business position set at the whims of a few execs. They really would destabilise entire markets to make less money. They really do get it wrong and lose billions while the hobbyist analysts get it right.
Oh well. John Riccitiello said it best a few months ago: "Never count Nintendo out", before promptly counting Nintendo out, then committing corporate Seppuku. That's a coherent and stable company right there.
also as EA is working towards making Frostbite it's main engine, and it apartantly is hard to get running on the Wii-u due to it's slow CPU, it makes it costly to develop for the Wii-U
as I have said from the start, the idea is nice, and with a little tiny bit more extra power it would have been faster then the PS3 and 360 and everything from those consoles could be ported over, and even get a bit of a polish, but instead Nintendo did it's own thing (for which I generally respect it but in this case it is just foolish) and coupled a nice GPU with an insanely slow CPU.
the system is skewed and that makes multiplatform development more costly. and sales are also far from ideal so why develop for the Wii-U... can;t blaim EA for this one...
@ Freek Hoekstra - As far as I'm concerned, the CPU for the Wii U is just fine, and if a mainstream 3rd-party company can't do a multiplatform game with the Wii U in the mix or has a problem doing so, then the company is not competent enough to stay on, in my opinion. Activision has found ways to work things out with Nintendo as well as Ubisoft (Ubisoft is making Watch Dogs for the Wii U as well as for the PS4, so the game won't be just for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC). Considering the reports and news on EA's problems that I have been reading on Gamasutra, EA is just not competent, in my opinion. EA was truly something back in the days of Commodore 64, but some time later, it just didn't have that innovative side that made it live up to its name, Electronic Arts. Personally, I expected more from EA, but then again, Nintendo can do things without EA at this point and I prefer that Nintendo doesn't have any dealings with EA as the company can't be trusted. Nintendo should focus more on other 3rd-party companies.
@Jeferson Soler Not really here to defend EA but their problem isn't that they lack competence. It's the undisputed fact that they don't want to spend the extra buck only to make a very small margin of profit from the WiiU version. It could also be argued that the WiiU versions might become notoriously buggy and badly ported, as many of EAs titles have seen fit to be these last few years.
"As far as I'm concerned, the CPU for the Wii U is just fine, and if a mainstream 3rd-party company can't do a multiplatform game with the Wii U in the mix or has a problem doing so, then the company is not competent enough to stay on..."
Just because EA made a decision to stick with a certain engine that may or may not run well on the Wii U doesn't mean they are incompetent."
Fanboyism doesn't win you anything. Devs at DICE have stated they Frostbite 2 (I think?) was sluggish on Wii U so they didn't even bother withh Frostbite 3. As far as YOU are concerned doesn't really matter because it isn't your time, money and resources at stake.
Yeah, 'cause EA wouldn't lie about platforms being incapable to host an engine to further a business interest: http://kotaku.com/5990997/coders-discover-20+minute-offline-timeout-in-si mcity - check for cloud computing.
To select an engine as your base that runs on everything (including to my incredulity iOS and Android) EXCEPT the platform of a partner you very publicly enthused about, and then very publicly dropped about a day before they're announcing their lineup screams political shenanigans, particularly in the face of the empirical capabilities of your competitors. The possibilities are clear: EA are either capricious and underhanded, or retarded. The fact they may be both is harrowing, underscored by their financials.
@ Edge Walker - Calling me a fanboy or accusing of fanboyism doesn't win you anything. One thing that I learned a long time ago from my best friend is to never be a fanboy/geek/otaku, so I have a policy to always be a fan and never a fanboy. It is just that I have grown really tired of people giving grief to Nintendo due to their own issues with the company based on the years when Yamauchi was in charge of Nintendo (from what I heard, Yamauchi was not a nice guy at all). Some people accuse Nintendo of not keeping up with times, but I see those same people being guilty of that accusation by still treating Nintendo like as if it was the Nintendo of the Yamauchi years among other things, behaving like children in a negative manner whenever Nintendo is mentioned. Nintendo may not be perfect, but the company is really trying to turn things around and has being turning things around for quite some time (although, the company does need to fix the American marketing for the Wii U :/). As Merc Hoffner pointed out, EA is the one acting like fanpeople (or more specifically, corporate fanpeople) and it is not the first time that EA behaved this way, so the company has a lot of growing up to do. Also, it doesn't help matters for EA that Frostbite can be used on mobile phones, either, so engine comparability is not a legitimate excuse for not being able to make games for the Wii U.
@ Sorin Sandru - "It could also be argued that the WiiU versions might become notoriously buggy and badly ported,..."
While I doubt that's the case with EA, I'll admit that there's a legitimacy to your comment in case of some other companies. In fact, that's the conclusion that I came to as the reason for why the Wii U didn't get the latest Bioshock game. Bioshock Infinite was already on a verge of completion, so doing a Wii U version of the game at that point would have been a kiss of death as it would have been a rush job, just like Epic Mickey 2. Fortunately for Nintendo and Sony fans, that won't be the case with Watch Dogs as the game will be coming out later this year and not sooner, so it shouldn't be a rush job for the Wii U and the PS4.
It was a DICE dev who said it, not an official EA statement, so that is who you are calling a liar.
I love it when people on the outside claim that people on the inside are lying with nothing more than evidence pulled from their asses.
He could be lying. he could be telling the truth. You don't know and neither do I.
The reason I brought it up was to point out that it was a dev and not EA saying it.
And Jeferson, you make a lot of assumptions about why people criticize Nintendo.
Because of issues from when Yamauchi was CEO? I think the problems people have are current more than anything else. I don't see much change coming from Nintendo, but that doesn't mean they are doomed or anything. Some of the things people say about Nintendo are valid and some are not.
Take them on a case by case basis instead of just saying the critics are biased.
@ Edge Walker - "Take them on a case by case basis instead of just saying the critics are biased." Very well! I'll do that, but only out of respect and politeness. Having said that, that still doesn't change that there are people that still have this stigma when it comes to Nintendo that has nothing to do with current events, and in some cases, they tend to use present mistakes from Nintendo to justify their bias with the company that stems from the past. I have seen people's negative reaction towards Nintendo on forums, Facebook and messageboards (including on Gamasutra), which are mostly due to their past perception of Nintendo (whether it has to do with Yamauchi's iron fist actions, with past "console wars", or with the whole Mortal Kombat controversy that ultimately created this stigma of Nintendo not being friendly with the "mature" crowd), and those reactions were/are not a pretty sight, in my opinion. In case of EA, it is possible that the issues with Nintendo may be a whole lot deeper than whatever bias it may have towards Nintendo. Unless there's something that I'm overlooking, it doesn't look like that EA will be doing games for the 3DS, either. While it doesn't look like that Vita will be getting any EA games as well, EA is still doing games for PS3, so Sony will still be getting games for PS3, but Nintendo won't be getting games for either Wii U or 3DS for the time being. This is not the first time that EA pulled this kind of stunt. The company did that to Sega, too.
Let's say that EA would lose money on their Wii U releases given the current install base and projected sales. Wouldn't it make sense for them to not release games?
@ Edge Walker - That depends! EA could just as easily roll the dice and take a chance (like a true business company) by creating a Wii U exclusive game that's so good that it would help Wii U gain momentum with the sales, making EA into an "unlikely" hero. Remember that EA did do games that were/are exclusive to the Wii and a good number of those games sold real well from what I gathered. I understand the importance of multiplatform sales, but sometimes, it can help a company even more if it does an exclusive title for a specific system. The risk would be high, but in comparison to doing a multiplatform game, the chances of losing a lot of money is minimal, especially if the game isn't done on a high budget (it is possible to do a game with AAA quality at a low budget, but it might take more than one year to be completed). The aforementioned strategy should also apply with PS4. Otherwise, if EA releases a game that's for PS3 and PS4, then the fans won't be in a hurry with getting PS4 and will get the PS3 version of the game instead, causing EA to lose money and Sony to have difficulty with selling the PS4.
By that logic why would anyone ever invest in anything that loses money in the short term?
More pertinently, when you lose +$1billion on +$30million productions for the PS3 and 360, how prudent is it to gear up for +$100million productions for the PS4 and Nextbox?
@ Merc Hoffner - That's why doing a game as a multiplatform game is becoming more and more questionable at times. A multiplatform game would have to make more money than it would have done as an exclusive title in order to succeed and be profitable. Fortunately for some games, that feat can be pulled as some of those games will have the same target audience on all the different game systems (like the Call of Duty games). However, other games are not that fortunate, especially games that found success as a system exclusive but suffered when their sequels were done as multiplatform games (like De Blob and Epic Mickey). Capcom had/has the right idea when it came to the Monster Hunter franchise. Instead of doing a Monster Hunter game as a multiplatform game, Capcom does each version of a specific MH game as either a temporary exclusive or a complete exclusive, and in case of the temporary exclusive game, that game would be later ported onto another system. Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate is the one exception to the rule and may practically be the first MH game to be released to more than one system around the same time, but I'm assuming that's mostly due to Capcom wanting to experiment the connectivity between the Wii U and the 3DS. Not to mention, portable systems tend to be more popular in Japan, while console systems tend to be more popular outside of Japan at times.
I recall hearing rumors that EA and Nintendo originally had a deal to bring Origin to the WiiU and use EA's Origin service to be Nintendo's online infrastructure. Then Nintendo backed out at the last minute and EA feeling burned pulled all support. I slightly question this rumor, but it really wouldn't surprise me to know that both Nintendo and EA would be that petty.
Michael Pianta is right, but the situation between Nintendo and Sony was deeper than that. Neither of them were innocent with their disagreement, but having said that, Nintendo did a mistake on not working things out with Sony, and as a result, Sony used its own console designs for the next Nintendo system to produce their own game console system. Thus, Playstation was born!
Regardless of your fanboyism or feelings about EA, this isn't a good sign for the Wii U. It's not saying it is doomed or anything like that ( a caveat one must always be sure to include when criticizing Nintendo on this site), but lack of support from a big publisher like EA isn't the message you want to be sending.
See, this is something I heard yesterday and I think people tend to forget that EA supported the Wii rather well.
MySims, Facebreaker, Boom Blox, all the sports games (which they don't now for the Wii U), EA Sports Active, Rock Band, Dead Space Extraction, Medal of Honor Heroes...
I find it particularly jarring that this more or less officially means there will be NO Star Wars games on Nintendo platforms - those have always done decent numbers. The fact that EA has traditionally posted decent sales on Nintendo platforms with little to no effort means the total snub is particularly illogical (and ideological). I think there's real merit to the idea that non-core games on core systems have done as bad or worse as core games on Nintendo systems - what's the plan then? Simply excise a huge segment of the market? Console gamers younger than 12 don't exist anymore?
Do we really need to revisit the Nintendo and EA relationship. Even if you want to blame Nintendo for not making a console westerner developers want. EA has not met them even a fourth of the way. Madden 13 built of of the 12 engine just to make launch. When every other console version is using the superior game engine. The release of Mass Effect on Wii U at full price after you release a Trilogy Collection for the same price on other consoles. What you expect any person with common sense to do. This is after not releasing games like Tiger Woods on their console. Even though at one time the Wii version was their best seller. I'm sorry EA is a company that is allowed to try and play hard ball. Due to the monoply they have on certain sports titles. If their were other developers in some of the categories. Nintendo wouldn't need to deal with them. I just hope once Nintendo turns things around for themselves. They will keep the focus on making their company successful. Nintendo has shown they can survive without help. EA has shown their survival depends on the success of others.
Good riddance. After the last few debacles with EA, I'm not sure I would even want to be associated with them. Last EA game that I purchased was Dead Space 3...while a fairly good title...though the soul of it was fairly gutted and it included lots of things that upset me about games now---online pass/micro transactions. It will probably be my last EA game for a long long time.
Only part I'm upset about is the fact that there won't be any Star Wars games on WiiU. I remember most of my Star Wars gaming to be on PC or Nintendo consoles.
There's a load more new consoles on the way, but they sacked too many programmers. The Wii U was potentially the lowest earner for now and in the future and it had to go... It's a simple business direction, and I don't blame them at all. :)
(Probably)
Honeymoon from hell.
You know, I know where half this conversation is going to go: EA's just doing what makes business sense. No one professional would walk away from real business at the table if there was real potential. Grudges and pettiness are imagined. Armchair analysts don't know what they're talking about - we don't know the real situation.
Let me head this off right here. Huge businesses have done all these things. Yes, they really can be that dickish. They really will cut off the nose to spite the face. They really will sabotage their own 'efforts' to justify a larger business position set at the whims of a few execs. They really would destabilise entire markets to make less money. They really do get it wrong and lose billions while the hobbyist analysts get it right.
Oh well. John Riccitiello said it best a few months ago: "Never count Nintendo out", before promptly counting Nintendo out, then committing corporate Seppuku. That's a coherent and stable company right there.
as I have said from the start, the idea is nice, and with a little tiny bit more extra power it would have been faster then the PS3 and 360 and everything from those consoles could be ported over, and even get a bit of a polish, but instead Nintendo did it's own thing (for which I generally respect it but in this case it is just foolish) and coupled a nice GPU with an insanely slow CPU.
the system is skewed and that makes multiplatform development more costly. and sales are also far from ideal so why develop for the Wii-U... can;t blaim EA for this one...
the_works.php
Just because EA made a decision to stick with a certain engine that may or may not run well on the Wii U doesn't mean they are incompetent."
Fanboyism doesn't win you anything. Devs at DICE have stated they Frostbite 2 (I think?) was sluggish on Wii U so they didn't even bother withh Frostbite 3. As far as YOU are concerned doesn't really matter because it isn't your time, money and resources at stake.
To select an engine as your base that runs on everything (including to my incredulity iOS and Android) EXCEPT the platform of a partner you very publicly enthused about, and then very publicly dropped about a day before they're announcing their lineup screams political shenanigans, particularly in the face of the empirical capabilities of your competitors. The possibilities are clear: EA are either capricious and underhanded, or retarded. The fact they may be both is harrowing, underscored by their financials.
EA are corporate Fanboys.
@ Sorin Sandru - "It could also be argued that the WiiU versions might become notoriously buggy and badly ported,..."
While I doubt that's the case with EA, I'll admit that there's a legitimacy to your comment in case of some other companies. In fact, that's the conclusion that I came to as the reason for why the Wii U didn't get the latest Bioshock game. Bioshock Infinite was already on a verge of completion, so doing a Wii U version of the game at that point would have been a kiss of death as it would have been a rush job, just like Epic Mickey 2. Fortunately for Nintendo and Sony fans, that won't be the case with Watch Dogs as the game will be coming out later this year and not sooner, so it shouldn't be a rush job for the Wii U and the PS4.
I love it when people on the outside claim that people on the inside are lying with nothing more than evidence pulled from their asses.
He could be lying. he could be telling the truth. You don't know and neither do I.
The reason I brought it up was to point out that it was a dev and not EA saying it.
And Jeferson, you make a lot of assumptions about why people criticize Nintendo.
Because of issues from when Yamauchi was CEO? I think the problems people have are current more than anything else. I don't see much change coming from Nintendo, but that doesn't mean they are doomed or anything. Some of the things people say about Nintendo are valid and some are not.
Take them on a case by case basis instead of just saying the critics are biased.
More pertinently, when you lose +$1billion on +$30million productions for the PS3 and 360, how prudent is it to gear up for +$100million productions for the PS4 and Nextbox?
Regardless of your fanboyism or feelings about EA, this isn't a good sign for the Wii U. It's not saying it is doomed or anything like that ( a caveat one must always be sure to include when criticizing Nintendo on this site), but lack of support from a big publisher like EA isn't the message you want to be sending.
They really need to get some amazing first party titles out. They need to reinvigorate the WIIU as they did with the 3DS.
MySims, Facebreaker, Boom Blox, all the sports games (which they don't now for the Wii U), EA Sports Active, Rock Band, Dead Space Extraction, Medal of Honor Heroes...
I would call that meaningful.
Call it a hunch, but since that is quite open... It may not stay that way for long. But again, we'll have to see.
Only part I'm upset about is the fact that there won't be any Star Wars games on WiiU. I remember most of my Star Wars gaming to be on PC or Nintendo consoles.
(Probably)