For most of last year Crysis 3 looked as if it might come to Nintendo’s Wii U console. Crytek executives would often hint at the possibility — one even went so far as to say that they were “working with Nintendo” on something — but they would never outright confirm that a version was in development. Last January Crytek’s CEO, Cevat Yerli, put an end to the speculation by stating that there were “discussions” between EA, Nintendo and Crytek to get Crysis 3 on the Wii U but there was “not enough business drive in it“.
At the time, Yerli’s statement made it sound as if the Wii U version was killed before the developer had started any work on it. The CEO has since expanded on his statements, revealing that Crysis 3 was up and running on Nintendo’s console but there was not enough “business support” to publish it.
“We did have Crysis 3 running on the Wii U.” Yerli told Venture Beat. “We were very close to launching it. But there was a lack of business support between Nintendo and EA on that. Since we as a company couldn’t launch on the Wii U ourselves — we don’t have a publishing license — Crysis 3 on Wii U had to die.”
I highly doubt that a Wii U version of Crysis 3 would have made much of a difference in terms of overall hardware sales, however, I’m surprised that Nintendo didn’t do all they could to secure the game’s release.
For all the Wii U’s strengths, the console is getting killed by a lack of third-party support right now. At the very least, a capable Crysis 3 port would have signaled to consumers that the system will get the same software as the competition. As it stands now, its absence has only worked to reinforce the notion that the console will see limited third-party support, at best.
