Chalk up another blow to Nintendo’s third-party support on Wii U. Bethesda, a leading publisher in some widely-regarded titles such as Prey and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, has come out and almost bashed Nintendo’s console because it’s too out there for the company to develop for.
Pete Hines, Bethesda’s Vice President of PR and marketing, in an interview with Eurogamer, said the Wii U is “not something that we’ve done anything for previously”, noting he doesn’t remember the last time the company made a title for a Nintendo system. For those keeping track, the last in-house developed title was Where’s Waldo? for the NES back in 1991. The company also published 4J Studios’ Ducati Moto on the Nintendo DS in 2008, but let’s be honest, no one’s ever heard of it.
In terms of the future, Hines says there’s nothing in development at the moment and “whether or not we would [develop for Wii U] in the future is TBD. As for why, I guess I’d rather not go into that.”
This worries us. If any developer would be a fit for Nintendo, we think it would be Bethesda. They’ve got multiple large teams, so it would be feasible for them to divert some resources to at least seeing what the Wii U is capable of or how to use it in interesting ways. The team has no shortage of creativity, either, so it would really be interesting to see what they could do with Nintendo’s hardware.
While we’re pretty sure nothing is coming out of Bethesda for a Nintendo platform in the near future, that doesn’t mean we can’t expect something in the long term. If that happens, we’ll be sure to let you know. Just don’t hold your breath.