Nintendo Wii U to miss out on next-gen EA Games titles

Battlefield 4

No Battlefield 4 for Nintendo Wii U gamers?




The Nintendo Wii U could miss out on a host of next-generation EA Games titles because of its lack of power and compatibility with the Frostbite 3 engine.


According to EA DICE’s Technical Director of Frostbite, Johan Andersson, the game developer tested the Frostbite 2 engine on the Wii U, but received “not too promising results” from Nintendo’s new console.


Responding to a fan’s question on Twitter, Andersson revealed that the issues with Frostbite 2 on the Wii U were so severe EA will not be working towards making Frostbite 3 compatible with the console.


“FB3 has never been running on WiiU. We did some tests with not too promising results with FB2 & chose not to go down that path,” said Andersson in a tweet.


EA Games is already reportedly working on 15 titles for next-generation consoles that utilise the Frostbite 3 engine, and if none of them manage to make it to the Wii U it could be a devastating blow for the console that Nintendo is attempting to market as the move away from pure casual gaming.


Battlefield 4 was recently demoed by DICE running on the Frostbite 3 engine, with stunning photorealistic graphics created using the AMD Radeon HD 7990 graphics card, “DICE’s graphics card of choice.”


While the Nintendo Wii U does feature AMD technology, the already announced PS4, and potentially the new Xbox Infinity too, packs top of the range AMD CPU and GPU chips enabling high calibre graphics out of reach of the Wii U.


Not only will Wii U gamers miss out on Battlefield 4, but also titles like Mass Effect 4 and the next Dragon Age series instalment. EA Games now has exclusive right to all future Star Wars video games too, so Wii U owners won’t be getting their mitts on those titles either.


The Nintendo Wii U has suffered from low sales since its launch late last year, but several critics predicted a range of AAA Wii U gaming titles would boost sales. With an incompatibility with Frostbite 3, Wii U sales could continue to fall.


Check out our best games of 2013 picks to see what we’re looking forward to playing this year.


Via: Joystiq