It appears as if Electronic Arts is (perhaps not actively) boycotting the Wii U due to lacklustre results with its Frostbite 3 game engine.
There are currently 15 games we know of that will be running on the engine, including Dragon Age 3, Mass Effect 4, and likely some unannounced Star Wars games.
The technical director for DICE, one of EA’s studios said that since the Frostbite 2 engine wasn’t running well on the Wii U, they “did some tests with not too promising results … [and] chose not to go down that path” with Frostbite 3 on Wii U. He even stated that the engine has never actually been running on Nintendo’s console.
We’re expecting some pretty major backlash from the Nintendo faithful, as well as what turns out to be a big showing from Nintendo at E3 in just a few weeks. The company needs to strengthen its third-party support alongside its first-party staples in order to truly be successful in the market. When Electronic Arts almost entirely steps away from a console, it’s worth worrying about.
It might be worth noting that these engines would have never made games during the last generation of consoles, more specifically referencing the Wii. However, as we enter a new generation, what is the value of having some of the biggest games of the next two years on your console? We’d imagine they’re pretty important, but maybe EA and Nintendo have something else going.
We’ll find out at E3 2013…
