Electronic Arts’ chief financial officer, Stifel Nicolaus, has announced that the publisher is still making games for Nintendo’s Wii U console, however, he did confirm that the majority of their resources are focused on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One development.
As reported by IGN, Nicolaus revealed the surprising news during the Stifel Nicolaus 2013 Internet, Media and Communications Conference, adding:
“You know, I think Nintendo’s business was more [an] extension of their last console. I think what the consumer will find is a lot more powerful gameplay with the new boxes that are coming out, and a lot of excitement, but it’ll remain to be seen as to the services associated with those as to how consumers decide which direction they might want to go.”
In addition to directly contradict recent statements made by EA spokesperson Jeff Brown — who told Kotaku last week that his company has “no games in development for the Wii U currently,” — the CFO’s clarification will almost certainly come as a bit of a shock to EA Sports’ Bob Summerwill, who stated on his Twitter account last week that the “Wii U is crap.” Since EA’s relationship with Nintendo is not as dead as previously thought, I’m guessing Summerwill probably got called into someone’s office for a little talk last week.
Unfortunatly, Electronic Arts’ CFO stopped short of revealing exactly which titles are in development for the Wii U — both Madden and FIFA have already been confirmed as not coming to the Wii U — but it is reasonable to expect that we might hear more about them at E3 next month.
For now, the only thing we can say for certain is that there are a certain number of Wii U games currently in development at Electronic Arts. Whether that is good news, bad news, or just news, depends greatly on your personal view of EA.
