Not too long ago Electronic Arts made it known that Nintendo's Wii U was just not a priority for them. In fact, they made it known that they weren't even bothering with the later iterations of the Frostbite engine for the Wii U because it was a “crap” system. Well, tune of things have changed around a bit, as EA has put on the table the possibility of the Frostbite 3 running on the Wii U.
My Nintendo News picked up a story from Dual Shockers who translated an interview that was conducted on Japanese website 4Gamer, where EA Games Label Executive Vice President Patrick Söderlund stated that...
“Electronic Arts released Mass Effect 3 and FIFA 13 for the Wii U, but currently we’re focusing our resources on Xbox One and PS4, so it’s a fact that the priority (of the Wii U) is slightly lower. However making Frostbite 3 work on the Wii U is not impossible. Where there are gamers, we’ll be there as well. This is the true meaning of “omnidirectional”
That's some impressive phone-game translation right there. 1+ to gaming media for not screwing it up.
The comment is a reassuring show of confidence for the future third-party library support of Nintendo's Wii U, given that the system's biggest drawback right now is that it lacks an expansive software selection for various kinds of gamers.
Previously, EA Sports' software engineer Bob Summerwill completely destroyed the Wii U with more trash talk than a 12-year-old puberty-stricken Call of Duty player, calling the system “crap” and that it's less power than the Xbox 360 and that the tablet was weird and the online offerings were “poor”.
Summerwill's comments were an extension of EA's spokesman Jeff Brown who stated that the company had no games in development for the Wii U but alluded to EA being in a better position to support the launch of the PS4 and Xbox One. Around the same time, Frostbite technical director and DICE employee, Johan Andersson had stated that they chose not to go “down that path” to support the Wii U with Frostbite 3 games, meaning no Star Wars: Battlefront 3 or Battlefield games for the Wii U... for the time being.
I'm not 100% sure of what changed Electronic Arts' tone from “Wii U is a flaccid, dirty, smelly banana” to “Ehh, it ain't that bad”. However, this public relations shift to a more panegyric and diplomatic stance with Nintendo and their new console, could be in result of the absolutely massive backlash over the previous policies of the Xbox One, which a lot of the gaming community attributed to lobbying on behalf of EA... lobbying, I might add, that EA denies.
With Sony making it clear that they're basically anti-DRM, and Microsoft having switched their stance, and EA having abandoned Online Passes, I imagine the company may be reconsidering their stance with supporting the Wii U given that some forms of extra revenue from used game fees and DRM are now basically out of the question.
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