Two years ago at E3 2011 Electronic Arts former-CEO John Riccitiello stood on stage next to Nintendo President and CEO Satoru Iwata and proclaimed that there was a “breakthrough in [their] relationship with Nintendo, based on a stunning breakthrough in game technology. What Nintendo’s new console [the Wii U] delivers speaks directly to the players of EA Sports and EA games.”
Now, just six months after Nintendo launched the Wii U in North America, the “breakthrough” relationship appears to be official over, as Electronic Arts has confirmed that they have no further games in development for the console.
“We have no games in development for the Wii U currently,” Electronic Arts spokesperson Jeff Brown told Kotaku earlier this week — although he later left open the possibility that EA might resume development in the future.
Electronic Arts and DICE have made it perfectly clear in recent weeks that they are not interested in even trying to develop a version of Frostbite 3 for the Wii U, so the confirmation by EA’s spokesperson comes as no surprise. What is a bit surprising, is that the poor working relationship between the two companies has now reached a level where one EA employee has issued a scathing opinion about Nintendo and the Wii U on his Twitter account.
EA Sports Senior Software Engineer and Architect Bob Summerwill launched into a rather interesting little diatribe against Nintendo and the Wii U today on his Twitter account, going so far as to call the console “crap.”
The rant started after a follower asked Summerwill if there were “problems at EA or is the Wii U dead on arrival?” Summerwill responded with the following string of Tweets:
“The WiiU is crap. Less powerful than an XBOX360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet. Nintendo are walking dead at this point.”
“Nintendo are still operating like it’s 1990. They should have “done a Sega” and offered Mario/Zelda as PS4/Durango exclusives.”
“Instead they make this awful console, and this … http://www.nintendo.com/wiiu/downloads/wii-street-u …. Just stop it! Just make great games!”
“It is an utterly intentional decision to focus our resources on markets which actually matter … like mobile, and Gen4.”
“One more… Nintendo platforms have always been very poor revenue-wise for third parties. Only Mario and Zelda make money.”
“Yep, we’ve got plenty of problems, but WiiU isn’t where that family/casual market is. It’s on mobile/tablet now!”
It is probably a good idea to point out that Summerwill’s comments don’t necessarily reflect the feelings of everyone at Electronic Arts, but the fact that he feels comfortable making them public speaks volumes.
[Update 1] A screenshot gallery of Summerwill’s Tweets has been added to the bottom post. [Update 2] Summerwill’s Tweets have just been deleted from his account, and his account profile has been edited to remove any mention of his employment at Electronic Arts. The Tweets can still be viewed in our screenshot gallery below.
