At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn’t developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports’ Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as “crap” and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether.
“The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet,” tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA’s no-Wii U news. “Nintendo are walking dead at this point.”
Though the tweets, made early yesterday morning, have since been deleted, screenshots of them mushroomed across multiple sites, most prominently on NeoGAF.
Summerwill didn’t let up after that first tweet. “Nintendo are still operating like it’s 1990,” he goes on, saying it should have gotten out of the hardware business and made its Mario and Legend of Zelda franchises exclusives on either the PlayStation 4 or next Xbox.
“Instead, they make this awful console,” he added. Then, of EA’s withdrawal from developing for Wii U, he said, “It is an utterly intentional decision to focus our resources on markets which actually matter.”
Kotaku has attempted to contact Summerwill. An EA Sports spokesman at the publisher’s headquarters gave this statement: “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.”
However, earlier this week, EA spokesman Jeff Brown confirmed to Kotaku that the company has zero games under development for Wii U. Later reports verified that means FIFA, one of the world’s biggest selling games among all genres, will not release a version for the console this year. That goes for Madden NFL 25 as well, another enormous seller in North America.
Comments
50 responses to “EA Sports Developer Calls Wii U ‘Crap’ And Nintendo ‘Walking Dead’”
It’s a real shame that EA is so close minded about the console. It would have been nice to see what their dev studios could do with it.
i called nintendo dying a while ago now
There are have been people calling them dying for a long time. When Nintendo do die, they will feel their views have been vindicated.
Just remember that a stopped watch is correct twice a day.
wtf
stopped watch is correct twice a day
are u crazy or somthing
Oh dear…
Not sure if serious.
He may only have experience with 24 hour watches, which would only be correct once a day.
hahah, nice..
yeah because 24 hour analogue clocks exists
another retard
Please either be nice and shut up or leave. No need for name
calling
Don’t talk about yourself like that.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/24_hour_analog_clock_rua_24_horas_curitiba_brasil.jpg
Kotaku needs some sort of age verification for comments. Keep 12 year olds like bluxy from posting..
im never serious just a troll child on the internet lol
Not that hard to understand.. If a watch stops at say 3:00, well then its going to be correct twice that day. At 3:00am and 3:00pm, it isn’t rocket science!
but what has that got to do with nintendo and EA
bugger all
Do you not understand the line literally, or just the meaning behind the analogy?
pejamas explained the literal meaning quite well.
The analogical meaning is that if you remain consistent in proclaiming Nintendo’s downfall, even if it is 50 years away or more, eventually you will be right. It won’t matter to you then that you had been wrong all these years, you will just focus on the time you were right.
I hated nintendo scince 1990 so i guess your right
Captain America just wants everyone to be aware that he understood the reference.
I remember you from psychic detectives Great show!
You’d be naive to do so.
I bought a WiiU at launch and will admit although it is still plugged in, it has a pillowcase draped over it to stop the dust covering it. I have been playing games like SS and Mario G2 on it while I’ve been waiting for other games to come out. This time next year, the WiiU will be humming along nicely, even with the other consoles coming out. WWHD, MarioKart, SSB, and i predict it will get a port of GTA V.
PS4 and Infinity will start slow aswell (every console does), because developers will still be making games for the older consoles.
Well this just proves that EA cannot innovate anything and are too stupid to make games without their precious frostbite engine.
Oh frostbite So works on the wiiu! It’s not a revolutionary engine, it works on both the ps3 and 360 despite their massive differences, and the wiiu will actually have a lot in common with the ps4 in terms of architecture.
Then there’s the whole thing of ea pulling crysis 3 from release on the wiiu despite being ready to go. So cryengine works fine, but frostbite 2 doesn’t? Give me a break!
No, it’s perfect business sense. I was just looking at vgchartz the other day about Assassin’s Creed III, and turns out that the Wii U version sold 0.14 million copies, That’s much less than the PC version (which can be pirated) and AC3: Liberation (the game for a handheld that people think is dead).
It makes perfect sense to release games to platforms with higher install bases (something which the Wii U does not have yet). And it’s not EA’s job to sell units of the Wii U (it’s Nintendo’s).
I traded in my copy of AC3 on WiiU. Maybe it was the game itself but it was just so annoying. Got 25 bucks for a 50 dollar game.
Most people interested in Assassins Creed 3, had already purchased it on other consoles that they played the earlier games on.
That was the problem with a lot of the cross platform Wii U games, they had already been released on other platforms earlier. I love Arkham City but I already own it, same for Darksiders 2.
How does this prove that?
In previous announcements EA stated that their frostbite engine was too powerful for the Wii U, this time they state the Wii U is crap and weaker than an Xbox 360. Put two and two together and it’ll show that the reason they dropped Wii U’s development mainly because it’s too weak. So they are only good for graphical showcases and not innovation in gameplay.
Not really… All this really tells you is that the Wii U can’t run the engine, and doesn’t have a user base big enough to warrant the cost of making Wii U versions of EA’s games. Their games wouldn’t be any more or less innovative if they released Wii U versions.
I’m not saying they ARE innovative because… well… EA. But there’s no link between Wii U support and innovation or lack of it.
I’ve seen a lot of Wii’s sitting around collecting dust. Gamers know that XBox, PS and PC are where the AAA titles are going.
EA are still douchebags though.. Simcity’s always-on DRM anyone? How about the original ending to Mass Effect 3?
There is so much wrong with the AAA scene, turn away from it and there is a beautiful horizon of games waiting to be played.
You forget, a lot of them are ditching PC to last place as well. Sadly 🙁 Awww…PS, and Xbox is apparently where the money is at which is where the producers want to send all their dev money too. Yeah there are still a tonne of AAA games on PC, but just look at how many of them are ports.
I’ll be in the sad dome.
I bought a WiiU at launch and it has reminded me why I should never buy a console at launch. There just isn’t the games for it at the moment and it rarely gets used. It’s no different to the other consoles, but I actually waited until there was a decent enough library and some issue were fixed before buying.
It’s an interesting idea – but I think studio’s probably hate it because you can’t really just port games to it, since it’s a unique experience.
I get what they’re saying about the hardware, very underpowered – but then that has ALWAYS been nintendo’s way, they’re about the experience not about just pushing pixels, and that movement is continually gaining steam these days anyway (look at minecraft and angry birds for example).
That said, the high development cost combined with low uptake is going to hamper this console I think personally.
“very underpowered – but then that has ALWAYS been nintendo’s way”
Yep. Always. Always being 2006 – onwards.
The N64 was hardly underpowered when compared to offerings from others at the time. They went wrong by releasing a system with an arcane media system (cartridges) which while they’ve a superior load time, that’s the only advantage. Limited capacity and increased manufacturing cost meant that Nintendo botched what was potentially a superior console.
Losing that huge customer base scared off the majority of 3rd party developers and they’ve never really gotten the buy in from them since. Consoles like the Gamecube, Wii, and Wii U have only exacerbated that problem though you can argue the N64 and Gamecube consoles did the most damage.
The only thing keeping them in the game is their handhelds and even that is under threat thanks to iOS and Android based systems.
Not always, they once develped a powerhouse in the GameCube, which was the most powerful of the generation because of it’s integrated architecture. Look what happened there and no wonder Nintendo are hesitant about focusing purely on power.
Smart.
EA’s isn’t the most well liked company in the industry and he goes off running his mouth making more enemies. Sure his free to say whatever he wants but at the end of the day people don’t care if it’s him saying it, it’s ultimately EA. This won’t turn out like an A.Orth case since I doubt many people disagree with him or care about what he said.
I for one feel the console is mediocre, better way of putting it.
Oh well, Nintendo went from trading and playing cards to complex game consoles. I think that’s pretty impressive. More so than any other game company that I can think of.
Innapropriate from someone of their position, but it just goes to show the lack of support for the Wii U. I think this machine will slowly fade away, and hopefully Nintendo will learn something from this.
Id take EA over nintendo anyday
Boy you must really hate Nintendo.
I love this guy, he can’t be more right about the Wii U it is a piece of garbage.
Nintendo wont go away. They have millions put away. Sony has been bleeding money for years now….. They would be the first to go if anyone does
So true, they say this will be Nintendo’s last console. If Sony don’t have early success with the PS4 then it might be their last. Its funny that the Wii U’s slump will somehow not at all happen to the next Sony or Microsoft. This Christmas there will be 3 consoles to choose from. One of which will have a strong library of exclusive games, and 2 major updates. I am not saying the the next Sony or Microsoft will be fails, just this crazy notion that they will just boom from the start and have all these games with non stop sales. Nintendo won’t let the WiiU fail the same way they didn’t let the 3ds fail. It is also looking like Disney will be forcing EA to release the new Star Wars titles as they like the Wii U.
Finally someone who speaks some sense!
I wonder how many people can afford $900 for a console. May as well get a computer that has way more power
Nintendo is not in a position to release gaming hardware in today’s market. I agree. THey should save what’s important and focus on making more of that, instead of putting a nother underwealming platform out there and stressing the already thin third party development resources.
The only reason for them to make dedicated hardware is the third party licesncing fees they gain, and judging by the recent statements by such companies I believe that is not a big potion.
Next distributing First party Nintendo games on other platforms, would that seriously deminish profits OR maximise it because of the less cost in console upkeep?
EA properties;
Battlefield series, Burnout series, Command & Conquer series, Crysis series, Dead Space series, Dragon Age series, FIFA series, Fight Night series, Harry Potter series, Madden NFL series, Mass Effect series, Medal of Honor series, NBA Live series, NCAA Football series, Need for Speed series, NHL series, Rock Band series, SimCity series, The Sims series, Skate series, SSX series, Star Wars series.
Amount of a fuck given- minimal.
Well i have got Crysis 3 and many other games to work on my Wii U better them the other consoles I think its just I’m an fan boy who dislikes Nintendo that’s what it sounds like to me sad really also shows Electronic Arts must not be as good of a game company as i thought.