EA Confident of Wii U Success
EA is so confident of Wii U’s success that it has been working on games for the console for some time and has pledged to have titles ready for it from “day one”.
Discussing the importance of launch-day support for consoles, EA Games label boss Frank Gibeau said, “It served us well on PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3. Getting in early is partly about being a successful transition company and figuring out where the hardware is going to go.”
He added, “With the Wii U it’s important for us to get there on day one so we can get in and build as big an audience as possible.”
While admitting that supporting any new console from launch is a “gamble”, Gibeau said EA is pretty hot on Wii U. “We were really blown away by the unique innovation that Nintendo brings with the Wii U controller on a high performance machine,” he said. “The ability to do HD graphics and access game experiences in a completely novel way and a way that’s never been seen before, it really struck our fancy.
“We were excited by what Nintendo presented to us, we thought about it and it fits well with what we’re trying to do with our franchises like FIFA and Madden and Battlefield. There’s great horsepower there, great innovation and Nintendo’s got fantastic branding. We’re platform agnostic as a company so if we find something we believe will have success commercially and critically, and has a business model that works for us, we’re in,” added Gibeau.
He went on to say that despite the lack of actual software shown at E3, EA has had games in the making for some time and will show them when they’re ready. “We’ve had [Wii U] for a little while, I can’t really go into the details of it. We’ve had machines and we’ve been working on games,” he said, adding “We’ll show games when they’re looking ready, when they’re looking tight.”
Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata believes a strong launch line-up can ensure the Wii U gets off to a better commercial start than the 3DS.
