General Nintendo sales/business discussion topic (previously: The Wii U Thread)

[Mando-Whirl-Wind]

 

 

 

 

 

Love the conspiracy theories. It's just a software engineer expressing his personal opinion on his twitter account, folks. Common opinion among developers nowadays, not exclusive to EA by the way.

 

I doubt there's any secret motive behind EA's lack of support, simply cost-efficiency reasons. The WiiU can't handle the new Frostbite engine (that all of their internal teams use now) and since neither console nor games sell, they don't deem it worth the money scaling everything down for it.

Actualy, its never been factualy confirmed that it cant, they just havent put in the effort

[SuperLink]

Love the conspiracy theories. It's just a software engineer expressing his personal opinion on his twitter account, folks. Common opinion among developers nowadays, not exclusive to EA by the way.

 

I doubt there's any secret motive behind EA's lack of support, simply cost-efficiency reasons. The WiiU can't handle the new Frostbite engine (that all of their internal teams use now) and since neither console nor games sell, they don't deem it worth the money scaling everything down for it.

You're kidding right? The amount of anti-Nintendo coming from EA goes far beyond "cost-efficiency". EA have never failed to release sports games on Nintendo systems even when they didn't sell until now, even late as hell into the Gamecube era when no other games were being released, it got EA's sports ports, sometimes with GC extras like Mario characters.

Frostbite can be scaled too.

 

You know what's even more bizarre?

The 3DS, the fastest selling handheld console of all time, also has jack-all EA support. Don't tell me there's nothing suspect going on between Nintendo and EA.

 

Like I said in things like this probably happen behind the scenes all the time in an industry as corrupt and power-hungry as the games industry, especially between powerful companies. EA has power up the ass and absolutely is not lacking in the funds needed to port an engine or game to the Wii U, which is supposedly "old tech", or even the 3DS, which is extremely successful and simple tech, when they were busy porting things to the Gamecube even when the 360 was already out?

 

If you don't think there's anything behind the scenes going on between Nintendo and EA, when EA are making no games for any Nintendo system for the first time in over 2 decades, then I'm not sure what will convince you otherwise.

 

Also regardless of the dude's opinion, a professional like him expressing it on a public forum that could get him fired (especially if he were talking about any other company) isn't really "ok", he's a dumbass.

Edited May 17, 2013 by SuperLink

[Mando-Whirl-Wind]

Normaly I would ignore the EA stuff, however they now have the keys to ALL STARWARS GAMES, which means that unless they scale it back, they wont be releasing starwars games on Wii-U despite the fact that Starwars games have a decent history on Nintendo consoles(rouge squadron series for instance)

And I dont think its technicly so much an instance of scaling as much as optimizing, since the Wii-U has some areas that are a lot more powerful than others

[Autosaver]

Didn't they also handicap the Wii Madden games midlife and cannibalize the 3DS Madden game?

[Tornado]

I kinda doubt Madden uses Frostbite.

[Badnik Mechanic]

Come on, Cas. Really now? Do you just want to stir the pot? That article just can't be taken with a straight face.

 

Way to miss the point.

 

The fact is, the top selling game in the UK for the Wii-U sold under 1000 units.

 

And before someone comes back with "Oh well... the UK market has been bad" we're talking about less than 1000 sales for a new next gen consoles getting the number 1 spot. Doesn't matter how you try and spin it, or how you try to explain it, less than 1000 sales for a new game to reach the number 1 spot is terrible.

[SuperLink]

I kinda doubt Madden uses Frostbite.

EA Sports games don't use Frostbite, no.

[Dobkeratops]

You're kidding right? The amount of anti-Nintendo coming from EA goes far beyond "cost-efficiency". EA have never failed to release sports games on Nintendo systems even when they didn't sell until now, even late as hell into the Gamecube era when no other games were being released, it got EA's sports ports, sometimes with GC extras like Mario characters.

Frostbite can be scaled too.

 

Gamecube was easy to develop for and not underpowered for its generation. Porting games to it and Xbox was cheap as hell since both could push multiplats harder than the lead PS2 version.

 

Frostbite's scalability depends on which platforms are supported in its core programming. Coding it for WiiU specific performance is just not worth it at this point for DICE.

 

You know what's even more bizarre?

The 3DS, the fastest selling handheld console of all time, also has jack-all EA support. Don't tell me there's nothing suspect going on between Nintendo and EA.

 

Is it, in the west? Because that's where EA makes money. How profitable have ever been their handheld efforts? Honest question since they've struck me as a more home console oriented company.

 

Handhelds are a separate thing and nowadays there's the mobile market mixing things up.

 

If you don't think there's anything behind the scenes going on between Nintendo and EA, when EA are making no games for any Nintendo system for the first time in over 2 decades, then I'm not sure what will convince you otherwise.

 

If it made them $$$$$, they'd be all over it. That's how huge third party publishers operate.

 

Petty tantrums are kind of hard to justify to your shareholders when there's money left in the table.

[Tornado]

Gamecube was easy to develop for and not underpowered for its generation. Porting games to it and Xbox was cheap as hell since both could push multiplats harder than the lead PS2 version.

 

Frostbite's scalability depends on which platforms are supported in its core programming. Coding it for WiiU specific performance is just not worth it at this point for DICE.

 

Which, again, EA completely dropped support. Even for games that obviously do not use Frostbite that they traditionally release for half a decade after everyone has moved on to newer consoles; and despite systems that are unilaterally floundering in comparison still getting EA's support (like the Vita versus the 3DS). You're crazy if you think that the Frostbite excuse is anything more than an out for EA over whatever is happening behind the scenes.

 

 

Petty tantrums are kind of hard to justify to your shareholders when there's money left in the table.

 

What was the context that the original Playstation was designed under again?

 

What about the Dreamcast; where EA said they would not support it until it met sales targets, it blew past those sales targets and EA didn't support it anyway?

 

 

Petty tantrums, maybe not. But that doesn't mean they will support the system if they wanted something from Nintendo and Nintendo wouldn't play ball.

[Autosaver]

And before someone comes back with "Oh well... the UK market has been bad" we're talking about less than 1000 sales for a new next gen consoles getting the number 1 spot. Doesn't matter how you try and spin it, or how you try to explain it, less than 1000 sales for a new game to reach the number 1 spot is terrible.

1000 copies of a game for a console with an extremely small base is kind of bad, but not that much if you put into perspective.

 

Another website posted that the top selling game sold 10,000 copies on 360/PS3. That's with a HUGE install base.

Edited May 17, 2013 by Autosaver

[SuperLink]

Gamecube was easy to develop for and not underpowered for its generation. Porting games to it and Xbox was cheap as hell since both could push multiplats harder than the lead PS2 version.

 

Frostbite's scalability depends on which platforms are supported in its core programming. Coding it for WiiU specific performance is just not worth it at this point for DICE.

Porting games to the Wii U should be cheap too compared to how cheap porting to PS3 used to be, being underpowered for its generation would make 7th gen ports even easier to do, and like I said this isn't just about Frostbite but EA's sports games, only a handful of EA games use Frostbite, and the entire sports segment that's skipping Nintendo systems completely this year is even more bizarre.

 

 

Is it, in the west? Because that's where EA makes money. How profitable have ever been their handheld efforts? Honest question since they've struck me as a more home console oriented company.

 

Handhelds are a separate thing and nowadays there's the mobile market mixing things up.

It's the best selling worldwide, iirc. And I also believe EA are publishing more titles on Vita than they are on 3DS. I'm all for Vita support, it needs it, but for it to support Vita and not 3DS is truly suspect given their userbase difference.

 

 

If it made them $$$$$, they'd be all over it. That's how huge third party publishers operate.

Of course they would, but even without the $$$$$ this is very peculiar behavior for them, considering their usual support for Nintendo persevered even in Nintendo's darkest times with a home console (which I consider to be the latter years of the N64 and GC's lives).

 

This sort of behavior from a professional is even more bizarre, but it's not been rare nowadays. Everyone who should be under NDAs seems to be taking up to Twitter to bitch about things they really shouldn't be bitching about. If an EA employee publically knowingly insulted the Sony or Microsoft systems? I wonder how that'd go down with the higher ups.

[Carbo]

Tweets were removed.

Way to miss the point.

 

The fact is, the top selling game in the UK for the Wii-U sold under 1000 units.

Bullshit. Unless you're strictly speaking on the sales charts for a weekly basis which are not revealed to the public, even though the most sales a game does there is around +20k a week, this is factually impossible.

[Autosaver]

I also noted that the source has not been confirmed and is currently labeled as a rumor. I don't think it should be posted as a fact especially after the meltdown the author of the article had later on.

Edited May 17, 2013 by Autosaver

[Dobkeratops]

Porting games to the Wii U should be cheap too compared to how cheap porting to PS3 used to be, being underpowered for its generation would make 7th gen ports even easier to do, and like I said this isn't just about Frostbite but EA's sports games, only a handful of EA games use Frostbite, and the entire sports segment that's skipping Nintendo systems completely this year is even more bizarre.

 

Downporting is harder. Assets have to be scaled back and extra effort is needed to make sure everything runs within a more constrained environment, not to mention having to rewrite entire parts of code that deal with features the underpowered hardware in question may lack.

 

Upporting is easy, moreso for non-exotic architectures. You keep the highest quality assets you already made, bump the framerate/IQ and call it a day. Add in the extra texture/shader if viable.

[SuperLink]

Downporting is harder. Assets have to be scaled back and extra effort is needed to make sure everything runs within a more constrained environment, not to mention having to rewrite entire parts of code that deal with features the underpowered hardware in question may lack.

 

Upporting is easy, moreso for non-exotic architectures. You keep the highest quality assets you already made, bump the framerate/IQ and call it a day. Add in the extra texture/shader if viable.

So why is upporting from PS3/360 to Wii U a problem? I can understand not porting PS4/720 games, but this isn't that at all.

 

The Wii U hardware is purportedly very simple to get games running on, Crytek had Crysis 3 running without flaw on the system until the project was pulled.

 

Not to mention EA is downporting things to mobile. Though I'm not sure how successful EA's games are on mobile platforms, I don't know why they'd be more successful than Vita or 3DS development if EA has a problem with handhelds.

Edited May 17, 2013 by SuperLink

[Autosaver]

It doesn't seem like it would be downporting, since the Wii U has shown to handle PC level assets compared to the muddy ones. Doesn't Most Wanted U use frostbite? Wii U handled that perfectly with enhancements.

 

And again, if they rewrite the code to be optimized for the Wii U, wouldn't that be a very good investment? Short term might burn but long term has a lot of positives attached. Especially if the Wii U picks up again.

[Tornado]

Most Wanted 2 used the Chameleon engine from Hot Pursuit III.

[Carbo]

It doesn't seem like it would be downporting, since the Wii U has shown to handle PC level assets compared to the muddy ones. Doesn't Most Wanted U use frostbite? Wii U handled that perfectly with enhancements.

 

And again, if they rewrite the code to be optimized for the Wii U, wouldn't that be a very good investment? Short term might burn but long term has a lot of positives attached. Especially if the Wii U picks up again.

Most Wanted doesn't use Frostbite, it uses a modified version of Criterion's Chameleon Engine. Frostbite has never been on the Wii U.

While Most Wanted is a good example of a Wii U up port done right, a few elements had to actually be removed from it, most notably the amount of players allowed in an online race.

[Dobkeratops]

So why is upporting from PS3/360 to Wii U a problem? I can understand not porting PS4/720 games, but this isn't that at all.

 

Because WiiU does not offer a significant upgrade in regards to key aspects of the system, some of which are below PS3/360 performance.

 

So it's not upporting, it's having to do a separate SKU.

[Conando]

The GPU is a pretty significant upgrade, no matter how you want to slice it.

[Tornado]

Because WiiU does not offer a significant upgrade in regards to key aspects of the system, some of which are below PS3/360 performance.

 

So it's not upporting, it's having to do a separate SKU.

 

Since you've ignored it the first two times, what about non-Frostbite games makes them impractical to port that EA would drop them as well? Madden isn't Battlefield 3 or Metro. FIFA isn't Battlefield 3 or Metro.

[Autosaver]

 

Because WiiU does not offer a significant upgrade in regards to key aspects of the system

 

The GPU is several tiers above what's in the 360/PS3.

The RAM is quadrupled (2GB vs 512MB - Devs have constantly asked for RAM)

The CPU while lower clock speed seems to be able to push a lot of computing power, which will help once developers start optimizing for it.

 

http://www.eurogamer.net/videos/trine-2-wii-u-vs-ps3-comparison-video

 

Also, several developers for the Wii U have stated that their games have not been able to be ported to 360/PS3 due to the extra power the Wii U packs. DLC for Trine 2 even had a similar reason and would had to be severely modified to run on the 360. These facts alone really say that no, the Wii U is not on par.

 

The only thing below PS3/360 performance is probably the CPU, and we still don't know how powerful it actually is. Is it truly weak, is it not optimized, is there power not being tapped into?

[Mando-Whirl-Wind]

If EA was after profit they would support the Wii-U, but instead what they want for some reason is to try and kill it, which really stinks as they now have the rights to Star Wars games....

 

 

So guess we wont be seeing a new rouge squadron title on a nintendo console any time soon

Edited May 18, 2013 by Mandobardanjusik

[Patticus]

EA is making Frostbite for mobile platforms, and it already runs on the PS360. Crysis 3, with its shiny ass graphics engine, was running just fine on it, and was virtually ready for release when EA shitcanned it for no good reason.

Like hell can the Wii U not run FB, there's no technical reason it can't run it, they just can't be bothered to put any time into making it run because the money men said "Low sales, no point," or something to that effect, despite the fact that sales would go up if more third parties supported it.

[Autosaver]

I really hope they decide to change their mind after a probable success of the Wii U during this holiday season. I thought it would be smart for EA to throw a game in and release it around Christmas to take advantage of the boom of sales.