Electronic Arts recently said that their Frostbite Engine 3 would not make it to the Wii U since even their last generation engine was running poorly on Nintendo’s new console.
Today, a senior engineer at EA who has been with the company since 1999 posted some pretty harsh remarks for big-N on Twitter. Since the posts have been removed, we’ve borrowed the screen caps from IGN, posted below.
The story goes like this: Microsoft web programmer Scott Hanselman posed a question to the public on Twitter this morning asking about the state of the Wii U and EA’s relationship. Out of his own accord (given that the original tweet was directed to no one specifically), Bob Summerwill of Electronic Arts had the following things to say (in order):
“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, … Just stop it! Just make great games!”
“It is an utterly intentional decision to focus our [EA’s] 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.”
Whew. That’s a lot of shit to shovel before 8AM on a Friday. The tweets have since been removed.
This isn’t the first outburst on Twitter we’ve seen against something someone is doing in the gaming industry. The first outburst by Adam Orth over at Microsoft cost him his job, and this one could very likely cost Summerwill his.
Despite EA not having any games in development for the Wii U at this time, Kotaku reached out to the company and received this statement on the affairs that transpired:
EA has a strong partnership and an active agreement with Nintendo to develop games for the WiiU. Last year we released Mass Effect 3 and several of our EA Sports titles on that platform. So far, we have not announced any new titles for Wii U this year, but that does not preclude more games in the future.
It’ll be interesting to see how the relationship with Electronic Arts and Nintendo is stressed over the coming weeks and months, especially if the rumours of an EA-Microsoft partnership are to be believed.
We’ll have all the latest going forward on EA’s disdain for Wii U. Stay tuned!
