EA To Nintendo: Wii'll Come Back If U Sell More Boxes

[Karloff]

EA To Nintendo: Wii'll Come Back If U Sell More Boxes

"We're a rational company," says EA, "we go where the audience is."

"The only thing they can do to fix it is to sell more boxes," says EA's Frank Gibeau, on the current dismal fate of Nintendo's Wii U. "We publish games where we think we can make a great game and hit a big audience, and make money," he added. "That's why we're here, that's why we have an industry." But until Nintendo moves more units, EA isn't about to throw good money after bad. It's already shipped four titles - Madden, FIFA, Need For Speed and Mass Effect - but those titles just aren't selling, because the Wii U itself hasn't sold enough boxes.

Nintendo seems to be willing to do what it takes to win EA back. "EA is a great partner of ours, they've had games on our platforms before," says Nintendo of America's Charlie Scibetta, who feels confident that, once the console's library grows, the Wii U will be a more attractive platform for publishers. "Once some of these games come out that we have planned between now and the holiday and into 2014," Scibetta went on to say, "it will help drive the install base." Presumably until EA sees concrete numbers, it will hold back on Wii U development.

Certainly Nintendo had a pretty decent E3, even title announcements [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/125049-Nintendo-May-Return-for-Future-E3-Press-Conferences]. There's no telling what the future may hold for Nintendo's console; EA may see the boxes sell yet.

Source: MCV [http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/ea-will-return-to-wii-u-if-nintendo-can-sell-more-boxes/0117253]


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[R.Nevermore]

Or maybe nobody wanted a madden, Fifa need for speed or mass effect port on the wiiU.... Could that be why they failed to sell?
Games sell consoles, not the other way around.

 

[AldUK]

They will be fine once a new Zelda comes out. All the fanboys will pick it up and Nintendo will continue trucking along in 3rd place.

 

[V8 Ninja]

I find it funny that EA has greater faith in Microsoft to sell more consoles than Nintendo when (A): Nintendo has already sold Wii U systems and (B): Microsoft has been having a horrific PR nightmare with the Xbox One. I understand that EA may not be able to take back its promises at this point, but EA continuing to insist that they 100% back Microsoft seem insane.

 

[TheSapphireKnight]

Perhaps you could just work on some titles with budgets that take the smaller user base into consideration?

 

[rofltehcat]

EA is certainly playing an interesting game atm.
First they denounce the WiiU, then they state that they'd like a balance between Sony and MS and then say they might come to WiiU after all.

I think they're really just trying to grab the best deals everywhere they can get and play them off as best as they can.

 

[Kiya]

EA To Nintendo: Wii'll Come Back If U Sell More Boxes

It's already shipped four titles - Madden, FIFA, Need For Speed and Mass Effect - but those titles just aren't selling, because the Wii U itself hasn't sold enough boxes.

Or those particular games aren't selling because they target a different audience demographic. Let's be honest here - the Wii-U is much more of a family orientated console and many people buying games for it are looking for family friendly games that they can play together in the living room with their kids. None of those games meet that criteria - even Need for Speed has no local multiplayer option as I understand (havn't played it) as such those games are going to fall to the bottom of the list of games that families want to buy.

 

[Dragonbums]

EA can stuff it.

At this point you should be the ones begging Nintendo to take you back. After your twitter tantrum, and outright lies about what the system can and cannot do, Nintendo is certainly not in the position to beg for YOU to come back. Especially how you guys were going all buddy buddy to the now hated Xbone.

 

[tlgAlaska]

I really can't imagine why ME3 as the last part of a trilogy wouldn't sell on a plattform on which the first two parts aren't available.

 

[idarkphoenixi]

So which is it, do they have games in development or not??

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I think the secret here is going to be an incredible exclusive or three. Along the lines of Resident Evil 4 on the Gamecube (before it "crossed" over, it was a GC exclusive for years). A mind-blowingly awesome, genre defining game exclusively on the WiiU. And not some bullshit "lift the controller up to look through the screen" or "flap your arms about Star Wars". No, I mean an actual good game. A new Street Fighter, a driving game to match GT/Forza, something.

The other problem the Wii U has is that it's more powerful than the other two and worse, has a different architecture than its future next gen counterparts. Currently, it's the most powerful console but any games that make use of its power will not work on 360/PS3. So people make PS3/360 games and may or may not port them across....this is the story I as a PC gamer have had to live with for some years now (getting 360/PS3 sloppy seconds). And next gen will be worse, as it'll be lower-spec than the XB3/PS4 AND have PowerPC processor, not X86 like the other two, making porting games much more work.

It could be the current model is really dying. As Yahtzee described in a recentish video, all one is really picking between when choosing a console, is whose walled garden you'll play in and which exclusives you get. There is nothing else to choose between them. As long as MS, Sony and Nintendo customers cannot interact or play with each other, the current model will persist and big publishers will continue incrementing numbers on CoD/WoW clones.

 

[Norrdicus]

Yea, EA is in no position to make terms, but we've got to be honest here, not many people have WiiU in the first place. In fact, 60% more Vitas have been sold than WiiU. You heard me, Vitas. My source is VGChartz, but if anyone has conflicting that data (5M vs 3M console units) then I'm all ears

 

[Requia]

So, this is what I was talking about on another thread. Despite doing worse than expected, the WiiU is currently on track to outsell the 360 (Wii sold 3.5 million consoles, in the same period the 360 sold 3.2m). There is no reason at this point not to expect the WiiU to be the best selling console of this generation. I can see hedging bets in case PS4 or XBone do better than expected, but dissing WiiU's sales doesn't make a lot of sense, unless you're simply uninterested in markets outside the US (US sales are abysmal).

Nor does it make sense to complain that games that *already* sold a shitload of copies before being ported to the WiiU failed. Of course nobody bought ME3, not only does ME3 rely on having the first two games on the same console, everybody who wants the game *already has it*.

 

[Requia]

Yea, EA is in no position to make terms, but we've got to be honest here, not many people have WiiU in the first place. In fact, 60% more Vitas have been sold than WiiU. You heard me, Vitas. My source is VGChartz, but if anyone has conflicting that data (5M vs 3M console units) then I'm all ears

it takes time to sell consoles, and the Vita came out a year earlier. If you look at the similar time period the Vita sold 2.2m from December 2011-June2012, the WiiU sold 3.5m from November 2012-March 2013.

 

[Parakeettheprawn]

How bout you go to the console and help to attract audience's ...?

My thoughts exactly. A platform only sells as well as the games on it. Imagine if Dead Space 3 had been on the Wii-U with the gamepad serving as a second screen for same-console co-op and around the house play? That would be fantastic! Hell, even SimCity could work with the Gamepad.