The most glaring indictment of the Wii U’s poor performance to date is the fact that FIFA — one of the biggest-selling franchises worldwide, in any genre — is publishing for everything but Wii U. FIFA 14 will come out on the PSP. It will publish on the original Wii. There’ll be a version on the PS Vita, for heaven’s sake.
EA Sports may have been there on the Wii U’s launch day with its Madden and FIFA flagships, but the president of its games labels said bluntly it won’t be back unless and until that console starts selling. “The only thing [Nintendo] can do to fix it is to sell more boxes,” Frank Gibeau told Joystiq. “We publish games where we think we can make a great game and hit a big audience, and make money.”
Gibeau pointed out that EA has published four games on Wii U, including, most recently, Need for Speed: Most Wanted. “It was a good game,” he told Joystiq, pointing to its Metacritic rating (an 86). “It wasn’t a schlocky port. We actually put extra effort into getting everything to work.”
That’s a key factor. In processing power, the Wii was actually a generation behind its contemporaries, with a controller that required special development attention. EA still made games for it because the Wii was a sales phenomenon. The Wii U has a special controller and, after the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 arrive later this year, its hardware will be behind its generational peers. Except the Wii U has a fraction of it’s predecessor’s installation base.
EA: Wii U’s lack of Madden, FIFA a ‘rational’ business decision [Joystiq]
Comments
10 responses to “What Will It Take To Get EA On The Wii U Again? ‘Sell More Boxes.’”
As far as I know Ninty has no intention of offering a price drop any time soon. As far as I can tell that is the only thing that would encourage sales.
I am waiting for a hardware revision, but if a handsome price drop came before then I might actually go and buy a Wii U.
I think there is a handful of things that Nintendo can do, but they are currently just sitting there in their castle, wearing their champions crown they got back in the 80’s, and starting all their conversations with “Back in my day’… Hell, they haven’t even realized the princess isn’t in that castle yet.
I don’t think putting the price down is going to help, there just isn’t the base of games to pull people in no matter what price they put it at. I often see “they need more games, that’ll do it” but as with this article that isn’t going to happen the normal way.
So it comes down to “How do you get more games without making more games”, here’s my thoughts:
Make every 3DS game available for the Wii U through the e-shop. I personally have no intention of buying a 3DS, but I would buy a handful of games in an instant if I could play them on the Wii U.
Stop making indie developers jump through hoops to get development kits.
Look into emulating Android & iOS games, I think Android at least would welcome this.
More ports of Nintendo style games e.g. Recettear, Terraria, Stardew Valley.
Other things I’d do to improve the Wii U as a whole.
It has 2 main startup screens, I’d add a hardcore gamers screen to the choices, with news, new releases, upcoming releases, etc.
Advertise the hell out of the 2nd screen & running games when the TV is in use. “Parent’s watching the news, Play Nintendo”, “Brother using the PC, Internet on your Nintendo”
Not sure how well the net works on the nintendo, I haven’t tried it, if it isn’t brilliant then fix it.
You could advertise the 2nd screen as an e-reader as well, not sure if it does that at the moment but they should get it doing that.
All of these things would help sales in my opinion, and as with this article if sales go up THEN we get more games, not the other way around.
haha its sad you wasted 10 minutes of your life typing that out.
TLDR
is that the correct abbreviation?
“Not sure how well the net works on the nintendo, I haven’t tried it, if it isn’t brilliant then fix it.”
Just answered your own question, you haven’t tried it.
A separate hardcore mode really?
As for more ports of “Nintendo Style games” not sure what you mean there aren’t all video games in a genre/style eg: Platform, Shooter? But E3 has come and gone with a lot of people saying Nintendo is playing it very safe with their line up game aka Mario/Kart, Zelda, Yoshi and DK.
As for Indies they love the U many are releasing games on the eShop.
I really don’t get the downvotes. Didn’t seem like he was just putting the boot in to be tacky and had thoughtful suggestions (which, granted, folks might not agree with but it’d be more helpful to say WHY than giving a digital raspberry).
In other words EA just doesn’t wanna bother with a port nor dedicate any resources to making use of the “tablet” controller..
A bit of a shame since on sports games the tablet is actually very very handy specially if you want to mess around w/ formations and whatnot for football and the like…
But then EA are supporting iPads (and hopefully Android tablets) for major releases like Battlefield 4. And they critisise the WiiU, because they probably won’t be able to seperately sell a $10 app that allows you to be the Commander.
Honestly, who cares about EA? Does their decision making make sense anyway? When was the last time they released a true Blockbuster? Plus Sims with the DRM debacle.
When EA starts releasing games for the new systems they are going to have DRM requirements…MARK MY WORDS! Why? Because their biggest selling franchises are their sports games. I think that they honestly think that they will be able to control the sales of their sports games through DRM.
This will put a huge Dent in their sports games however because people trade in their old ones, to get the new ones. Once EA implements this strategy…AND THEY WILL…It will hurt them more than they think because the majority of people will NOT buy the new version if they can not get some money off through trade in.
Now for Nintendo. I love you guys, I really do, but you need to catch up with the times.
As far as your network goes…STOP BEING THE BABYSITTER! You are afraid that you are going to expose young people to the INTERNET GAMING FOUL MOUTH COMMUNITY. Let us parents deal with that. Put into place parental controls that we can implement to keep our kids offline when playing.
Last, but not least, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! Have games AT LAUNCH! If you had Zelda, Mario, and Metroid at launch the system would fly off the shelves.
And I have always said this. You want to beat your competitors Nintendo?
Do what you use to do “back in the day” INCLUDE a Mario, or Zelda game with the console…Not a wii sports or something silly to show off the new features of your console, a true, full fledged game!
If you did these two things Nintendo. Your consoles would fly off the shelves, and we would not be talking about poor third party support right now.
“There’ll be a version on the PS Vita, for heaven’s sake.”
really? the PS Vita version is the weird one in the list of PSP/Wii/Vita?