5 ms·

EA Sports Developer Calls Wii U 'Crap' and Nintendo 'Walking Dead'

36 points by jamesjyu 13y ago

venomsnake 13y ago
It is a matter of perspective ... WII U seems to be having problems, and most of the Wii-s I know about seem to be used only as a dust gathering devices. I didn't even know it existed up to a month or two ago. Add into the mix the fact that Japan is no longer the gaming manufacturing powerhouse it once was and I won't be much surprised if they have rough time ahead of them. How open are nintendo to indies? Most of the fun stuff happens there and it seems like a natural fit to me.
- zalzane 13y ago
  >How open are nintendo to indies? Absolutely not at all. The only way for joe schmoe indie developer to make games for a nintendo platform is to crack the console and make homebrew games that only work on other cracked consoles. edit: looks like someone needs to be reminded what the downvote button is for. Everything I said is factually true, and the fact that Nintendo shows "interest" at a convention or allows some of the top selling indie titles onto their platform doesn't change how hostile they are towards the homebrew community.
  - mehrzad 13y ago
    Nintendo is slowly opening up to indies especially on the EShop with games like this: https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/WQaA7w-yvWTrSVOJ9x5w-IfWq4ew1rrE https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/WQaA7w-yvWTrSVOJ9x5w-I... They generally only take more famous titles IIRC, but saying they hate indies is not true at all, especially with their presence at that conference recently.
    - zalzane 13y ago
      How is that an indie title? It's published by sega and is being produced by Double Fine, a well established developer that has 50+ employees.
  - pfisch 13y ago
    This is completely wrong. I am part of an indie team and Nintendo has offered us much more than Microsoft or Sony. They have changed their stance towards indies significantly in the past 12 months. No one is really friendly with homebrew communities because those communities have a lot of ties to the hackers/crackers that reverse engineer their consoles. Indie devs != homebrew community. There is some crossover but we are talking about 2 different groups.
jamesaguilar 13y ago
As a gamer, I have felt this way about Nintendo at least since the wii. But it's hard to argue with results. That said, their recent results haven't been so great. It wouldn't surprise me if the company went the way of sets eventually, producing games for other consoles rather than making their own.
- CrazedGeek 13y ago
  ...said everyone since at least the N64, and they've been doing quite well since then. The 3DS is doing fantastically right now, and the Wii U's getting some heavy hitters very soon. They're not going down for a while.
  - threeseed 13y ago
    Given the recent merging of the console and handheld divisions it wouldn't surprise me to see the next handheld become the controller for the console.
  - deelowe 13y ago
    Time will tell. They do have quite a robust first party catalog, but I don't see nintendo being a major player in the console market for this generation. Outside a few loyal first party gamers, not many will buy the wii u. Everyone I know that bought a wii doesn't plan to get a wiiu.
    - OrsenPike 13y ago
      I will get a Wii U for Mario, Zelda, Metroid and Smash Bros. Plus probably a few others like I did for the Wii (Xenoblade, Last Story, Paper Mario, etc.) Who knows if Nintendo can survive ~5 more years with that sales model though as I am pretty sure in 2 years time they will begin to feel the pain from phones and tablets a lot more for the casual gamers that they won over with the Wii.
  - w0utert 13y ago
    Can't disagree the Wii has been pretty successful for Nintendo, and their handheld business has always been immensely profitable. I'm not very optimistic about the future of the Wii U though, IMO they are really to far behind with their hardware this generation. Nintendo consoles have never been about the best specs, but the Wii U is just barely matching 6 year old consoles at the end of their life cycle. Not a problem for many games and a large part of Nintendo's target audience, but with tablets and mobile hardware/software based devices getting more powerful each year, in 2 years or so we could have an Ouya 2 or an Apple TV with app store that will take care of the 'lighter gaming' segment that Nintendo pretty much depends on. If Nintendo fails to attract serious games and serious gamers because the hardware is too weak, and loses the light/casual segment to other players, they will have a hard time staying relevant in the console hardware business.
Karunamon 13y ago
Odd words coming from a massively reviled developer with leadership and financial issues... (Have a look at their long term stock price especially since 2008.. ouch!)
- corresation 13y ago
  Ad hominem. Further the comment is repeated only because it confirms something widely believed. The Wii was in a similar situation but got a reprieve via novel controls, but of that generation while countless 360s and PS3 units are still in heavy service, the Nintendo devices gather dust (mine never got unpacked after moving. Non-HD just destroys it in an HD world). The WiiU novelty seems to be a nonstarter. The device has the stench of a serious failure.
  - Karunamon 13y ago
    Stop misusing the term "ad hominem". I didn't say that EA was wrong in that post (which is an essential component of that kind of argument), I said they were being hypocritical. Pointing out hypocrisy/irony is not an ad hominem argument. Anyways, the U's launch library is admittedly abysmal, but it seems they've finally got their head around online services that don't fail completely. It only took 2.5 console generations, but there you go. I'd compare it to the early PS3 launch if anything. Critically panned, overpriced, bad launch library.. give it some time, and I've got a good feeling the situation will improve. PS3 turned into one of the better consoles of this generation, despite Sony's best efforts to the contrary. Also, complaints about underpowered hardware go to the bit bucket, Nintendo has pretty much always lagged behind the cutting edge on tech, any buyer/developer who doesn't understand and expect that at this point in time is not paying attention.
    - corresation 13y ago
      Your post was the very definition of an ad hominem attack -- you sought to cast aspersions on the speaker, having nothing, whatsoever, to do with the actual argument. And to humor your points, there is nothing whatsoever hypocritical or "ironic" about an EA developer criticizing a hardware device when their own organization is seeing a financial downturn (or at least they were...their last quarter was quite a rebound), and I'm perplexed how you think that is relevant. The PS3 succeeded because it could be justified as a superlative blu-ray player, at the perfect time that people started looking for blu-ray players. The WiiU has no such advantage. The WiiU has done dismally in reviews, has little software (and little hope of much to come, given that a growing number of game makers have declared it a non-starter), and is widely anticipated to be destroyed by the soon-to-be-announced next generation of consoles. It is DoA, given that its sole opportunity was a first mover advantage but that didn't pan out. Also, complaints about underpowered hardware go to the bit bucket Sure...okay...
adventureloop 13y ago
As noted at the bottom of the article this seems another case(see the ms fiasco) of employees not realising they always represent their employer. These two scenarios do a lot more damage to the public reputation of the companies. I don't think they can respond in anyway without taking more flak. This sort of commentary seems to belong in private places to me, what a strange world.
davidroberts 13y ago
I interviewed for a job with them (Nintendo of America), and also did some freelance work over the past couple of years, and I got the feeling whatever they may have been in the past, they currently run on a fairly bureaucratic model, and are not the kind of place that inspires or rewards innovation and creativity. They had video games in the lobby, but the recruiter warned me "Don't play them!" She told me a previous candidate she took there got a job, but was later fired for playing a video game on company time.
- dmead 13y ago
  a video game company that fires people for playing video games. got it.
  - obviouslygreen 13y ago
    This is ridiculous. Any company that expects to turn a profit can't have employees spending significant amounts of time playing video games when they're supposed to be working. This is why the "hey, come work here, we have XBoxes and Playstations" model is crap: You don't get a job to play video games, and people don't hire you do play video games (unless you're a playtester, then you'll play them til you hate them, if you can really call that playing).
    - skilesare 13y ago
      I bet those guys at Mojang and Valve never, ever, play video games. I know this because their profit per employee is so high. I is clear and a logical conclusion. /sarcasm If I had a game company and I had an employee that was not spending at least 25% of their time playing our game and other games and telling me how to make our games better, I'd fire them.
- w1ntermute 13y ago
  > I got the feeling whatever they may have been in the past, they currently run on a fairly bureaucratic model, and are not the kind of place that inspires or rewards innovation and creativity. You could say exactly this about most Japanese companies these days. Now what's interesting is that change may be in the air. The current prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has managed to line up the incentives correctly in the Japanese government's notoriously intransigent bureaucracy and started massive economic reform (often referred to as "Abenomics"), a topic that is the cover story of this week's issue of The Economist[0,1]. What Abe has done so far cannot create permanent change by itself, but if he is able to follow through on his other goals and make lasting structural reforms to the Japanese economy and society, then we may see an economic resurgence in Japan. That's something that the West should be looking forward to and supporting, given the need for a stronger counterweight in the Asia-Pacific region to China. It was previously believed that India would take this role, but things haven't progressed there as fast as people had hoped a decade ago[2]. 0: http://www.economist.com/printedition/2013-05-18 http://www.economist.com/printedition/2013-05-18 1: http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21578052-shinzo-abe-shaking-up-japans-economy-seems-different-man-one-whose-previous http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21578052-shinzo-abe-s... 2: http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21577373-india-will-soon-have-fifth-worlds-working-age-population-it-urgently-needs-provide http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21577373-india-will-s...
smegel 13y ago
I thought the Wii was ok, it was kind of cute that an underpowered device was outselling ms and Sony for a while. But it was clearly not going to work a second time, especially after the novelty factor of the original had fallen away. Now with Kinect especially, nintendo really needed to address performance issues and come up with something more than wii 1.1
- cpleppert 13y ago
  Am I the only one who thinks that the tablet thing was incredibly gimmicky? It doesn't add anything and just increases the price of the console. Nintendo could've delivered a console that was significantly more powerful than the current-gen a year ago and yet would be much cheaper than the next gen. Everything about the marketing was just bizarre. I don't know of anyone who has it or even wants it.
  - teamonkey 13y ago
    The Wii's 'remote' was deliberately designed to make the console more accessible. Non-gamers were still confused by games controllers, but the Wii's controller looked a bit like a TV remote - something everyone could understand. If you extend the thinking to the WiiU then you see that because more people are familiar with tablets and touch screens these days, and in fact a huge number of gamers are now on tablet devices. Adding a tablet controller would surely make the WiiU more accessible to non-gamers. You can kind of see some sort of logic there, though it doesn't seem at all inspired or with any foresight. Remember too that both Sony and Microsoft are pushing their own second screen technologies very hard this generation.
  - glhaynes 13y ago
    Have you played on one? Everybody I know that's actually used one likes it a lot, and it allows gameplay possibilities that have never really been possible before. (That said, it badly needs more games.)
    - robryan 13y ago
      I think it would be holding a lot of people back from buying. Maybe it is great once you start playing, from images online though it looks weird and awkward to use.
shaggyfrog 13y ago
I'm friends with Bob. He was my team lead, twice, at EA. He's a talented developer and a great boss. Nothing at all surprises me about the mixed reaction. Some people are mad because they love Nintendo. Some are mad because they hate EA. But I haven't seen a lot of people mad because they disagree with his message -- because he's speaking the truth. Nintendo's platforms are disappointing and underwhelming. Just do a search for "Nintendo Wii U sales". It's a fact. (Yet at the same time, like Bob says, Nintendo makes great games -- it's strange how that particular comment seems to have been lost in the noise!) It's hard to tell the truth sometimes, but especially in the games industry. Gamers get emotionally attached (or opposed) to companies, platforms and games more intensely than anything else in life. Any time you say anything about anything you're risking the digital mobs coming out with the pitchforks and the torches. And we know how mobs always take the time to pause and reflect. His only mistake is not being Linus Torvalds talking about Nvidia.
- Natsu 13y ago
  Nintendo has been "dead" a few times now, but they've been going since the 1800s or something when they made playing cards. They also have the capacity to come up with crazy new stuff nobody ever expected. Maybe they're not doing well right now, but I have a hard time believing they're "dead." On the other side, we have EA, best known for insulting people and lying about DRM, including their ex-customers, who they like to imply are homophobes. They haven't managed anything more inventive than tired Madden retreads and they're best known as a company for having their devs toil away in the EA slave mines, where they make minor stat tweaks to Madden for 26 hours a day. As a gamer, I know which company has more credibility with me. It's not EA.
  - shaggyfrog 13y ago
    The thing about sales figures is they're facts, not opinions. Finding Nintendo "more credible" than EA is an opinion that doesn't change the fact that Nintendo's platform isn't selling very well. Furthermore, you seem to be conflating two different topics. I'm not a fan of EA's DRM schemes any more than you are, but that's just not relevant in this discussion.
Millennium 13y ago
EA's greatest games were done on systems far older and less powerful than the Wii U. If all they want to do now is sell pretty pictures to easily-manipulated fratboys, then yeah; maybe the Wii U isn't for them. But then, maybe EA isn't for me.
- ameen 13y ago
  While I agree with part of your comment, it sparks of victimisation rather than anything. In today's multi-platform market, shoehorning a game into a system that's weaker than existing consoles is going to be painful. The fact that Nintendo's market particularly exists just for first-party games doesn't motivate 3rd party devs either. If one were to develop a modern console game with proper online functionality (multiplayer, leaderboards, dlcs, etc), doing so on Nintendo hardware would require extra efforts. It isn't as easy as getting it done on PSN or XBL. Nintendo's online system needs a much needed overhaul.
fhars 13y ago
Then this is a veiled acquisition offer, since EA has long been known as the place where great game companies go to die?
justinhj 13y ago
I think the WiiU has some great features. Playing new Mario for example looks great in HD, and at the end of each level you can post messages that other players will see. This creates the feeling that you're not in a vacuum. The WiiU is not a sales disaster; if they well only to fans of nintendos games that's still a business. EA Sports relies on flashy graphics and large US install base, so I can see why they would avoid WiiU. Professional developers need to remember when tweeting about platforms that they represent their companies.
chevas 13y ago
Nintendo is running right behind Sega and should turn itself around as soon as possible.
throwaway420 13y ago
Up until recently, I still thought that Nintendo might have had a very solid chance to recover from the tepid Wii U launch because it only takes one or two amazing, must-buy games to get a system flying off the shelves. Nintendo has had some great first party titles in the past and is certainly capable of creating some amazing experiences when they put their minds to it. But I think its become very evident that the suits, not the real creative gamers, are now running things at Nintendo. The recent Let's Play debacle where Nintendo monetizes user created YouTube videos is a relatively small example, but its a symptom of a dumb, bureaucratically led company that just doesn't get it. Most businesses DREAM of getting their customers to make free advertising for them, and Nintendo is going out of their way to stifle any incentive to create that free advertising for what amounts to pennies for a business of that size. That's something that really kills off any goodwill and support that a lot of people had for them. That's just one small example that really illustrates how far gone Nintendo is right now. PS: While the Wii U has a number of pros and cons, the console's relative lack of power is almost completely irrelevant to how fun the actual games are. That's one criticism from the article that I still argue that most people don't care about. Maybe game developers care about it, but as long as the games are fun most average people don't notice or care.

36 points by jamesjyu 13y ago

It is a matter of perspective ... WII U seems to be having problems, and most of the Wii-s I know about seem to be used only as a dust gathering devices. I didn't even know it existed up to a month or two ago. Add into the mix the fact that Japan is no longer the gaming manufacturing powerhouse it once was and I won't be much surprised if they have rough time ahead of them. How open are nintendo to indies? Most of the fun stuff happens there and it seems like a natural fit to me.

zalzane 13y ago
>How open are nintendo to indies? Absolutely not at all. The only way for joe schmoe indie developer to make games for a nintendo platform is to crack the console and make homebrew games that only work on other cracked consoles. edit: looks like someone needs to be reminded what the downvote button is for. Everything I said is factually true, and the fact that Nintendo shows "interest" at a convention or allows some of the top selling indie titles onto their platform doesn't change how hostile they are towards the homebrew community.
- mehrzad 13y ago
  Nintendo is slowly opening up to indies especially on the EShop with games like this: https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/WQaA7w-yvWTrSVOJ9x5w-IfWq4ew1rrE https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/WQaA7w-yvWTrSVOJ9x5w-I... They generally only take more famous titles IIRC, but saying they hate indies is not true at all, especially with their presence at that conference recently.
  - zalzane 13y ago
    How is that an indie title? It's published by sega and is being produced by Double Fine, a well established developer that has 50+ employees.
- pfisch 13y ago
  This is completely wrong. I am part of an indie team and Nintendo has offered us much more than Microsoft or Sony. They have changed their stance towards indies significantly in the past 12 months. No one is really friendly with homebrew communities because those communities have a lot of ties to the hackers/crackers that reverse engineer their consoles. Indie devs != homebrew community. There is some crossover but we are talking about 2 different groups.

jamesaguilar 13y ago

As a gamer, I have felt this way about Nintendo at least since the wii. But it's hard to argue with results. That said, their recent results haven't been so great. It wouldn't surprise me if the company went the way of sets eventually, producing games for other consoles rather than making their own.

CrazedGeek 13y ago
...said everyone since at least the N64, and they've been doing quite well since then. The 3DS is doing fantastically right now, and the Wii U's getting some heavy hitters very soon. They're not going down for a while.
- threeseed 13y ago
  Given the recent merging of the console and handheld divisions it wouldn't surprise me to see the next handheld become the controller for the console.
- deelowe 13y ago
  Time will tell. They do have quite a robust first party catalog, but I don't see nintendo being a major player in the console market for this generation. Outside a few loyal first party gamers, not many will buy the wii u. Everyone I know that bought a wii doesn't plan to get a wiiu.
  - OrsenPike 13y ago
    I will get a Wii U for Mario, Zelda, Metroid and Smash Bros. Plus probably a few others like I did for the Wii (Xenoblade, Last Story, Paper Mario, etc.) Who knows if Nintendo can survive ~5 more years with that sales model though as I am pretty sure in 2 years time they will begin to feel the pain from phones and tablets a lot more for the casual gamers that they won over with the Wii.
- w0utert 13y ago
  Can't disagree the Wii has been pretty successful for Nintendo, and their handheld business has always been immensely profitable. I'm not very optimistic about the future of the Wii U though, IMO they are really to far behind with their hardware this generation. Nintendo consoles have never been about the best specs, but the Wii U is just barely matching 6 year old consoles at the end of their life cycle. Not a problem for many games and a large part of Nintendo's target audience, but with tablets and mobile hardware/software based devices getting more powerful each year, in 2 years or so we could have an Ouya 2 or an Apple TV with app store that will take care of the 'lighter gaming' segment that Nintendo pretty much depends on. If Nintendo fails to attract serious games and serious gamers because the hardware is too weak, and loses the light/casual segment to other players, they will have a hard time staying relevant in the console hardware business.

Karunamon 13y ago

Odd words coming from a massively reviled developer with leadership and financial issues... (Have a look at their long term stock price especially since 2008.. ouch!)

corresation 13y ago
Ad hominem. Further the comment is repeated only because it confirms something widely believed. The Wii was in a similar situation but got a reprieve via novel controls, but of that generation while countless 360s and PS3 units are still in heavy service, the Nintendo devices gather dust (mine never got unpacked after moving. Non-HD just destroys it in an HD world). The WiiU novelty seems to be a nonstarter. The device has the stench of a serious failure.
- Karunamon 13y ago
  Stop misusing the term "ad hominem". I didn't say that EA was wrong in that post (which is an essential component of that kind of argument), I said they were being hypocritical. Pointing out hypocrisy/irony is not an ad hominem argument. Anyways, the U's launch library is admittedly abysmal, but it seems they've finally got their head around online services that don't fail completely. It only took 2.5 console generations, but there you go. I'd compare it to the early PS3 launch if anything. Critically panned, overpriced, bad launch library.. give it some time, and I've got a good feeling the situation will improve. PS3 turned into one of the better consoles of this generation, despite Sony's best efforts to the contrary. Also, complaints about underpowered hardware go to the bit bucket, Nintendo has pretty much always lagged behind the cutting edge on tech, any buyer/developer who doesn't understand and expect that at this point in time is not paying attention.
  - corresation 13y ago
    Your post was the very definition of an ad hominem attack -- you sought to cast aspersions on the speaker, having nothing, whatsoever, to do with the actual argument. And to humor your points, there is nothing whatsoever hypocritical or "ironic" about an EA developer criticizing a hardware device when their own organization is seeing a financial downturn (or at least they were...their last quarter was quite a rebound), and I'm perplexed how you think that is relevant. The PS3 succeeded because it could be justified as a superlative blu-ray player, at the perfect time that people started looking for blu-ray players. The WiiU has no such advantage. The WiiU has done dismally in reviews, has little software (and little hope of much to come, given that a growing number of game makers have declared it a non-starter), and is widely anticipated to be destroyed by the soon-to-be-announced next generation of consoles. It is DoA, given that its sole opportunity was a first mover advantage but that didn't pan out. Also, complaints about underpowered hardware go to the bit bucket Sure...okay...

adventureloop 13y ago

As noted at the bottom of the article this seems another case(see the ms fiasco) of employees not realising they always represent their employer. These two scenarios do a lot more damage to the public reputation of the companies. I don't think they can respond in anyway without taking more flak. This sort of commentary seems to belong in private places to me, what a strange world.

davidroberts 13y ago

I interviewed for a job with them (Nintendo of America), and also did some freelance work over the past couple of years, and I got the feeling whatever they may have been in the past, they currently run on a fairly bureaucratic model, and are not the kind of place that inspires or rewards innovation and creativity. They had video games in the lobby, but the recruiter warned me "Don't play them!" She told me a previous candidate she took there got a job, but was later fired for playing a video game on company time.

dmead 13y ago
a video game company that fires people for playing video games. got it.
- obviouslygreen 13y ago
  This is ridiculous. Any company that expects to turn a profit can't have employees spending significant amounts of time playing video games when they're supposed to be working. This is why the "hey, come work here, we have XBoxes and Playstations" model is crap: You don't get a job to play video games, and people don't hire you do play video games (unless you're a playtester, then you'll play them til you hate them, if you can really call that playing).
  - skilesare 13y ago
    I bet those guys at Mojang and Valve never, ever, play video games. I know this because their profit per employee is so high. I is clear and a logical conclusion. /sarcasm If I had a game company and I had an employee that was not spending at least 25% of their time playing our game and other games and telling me how to make our games better, I'd fire them.
w1ntermute 13y ago
> I got the feeling whatever they may have been in the past, they currently run on a fairly bureaucratic model, and are not the kind of place that inspires or rewards innovation and creativity. You could say exactly this about most Japanese companies these days. Now what's interesting is that change may be in the air. The current prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has managed to line up the incentives correctly in the Japanese government's notoriously intransigent bureaucracy and started massive economic reform (often referred to as "Abenomics"), a topic that is the cover story of this week's issue of The Economist[0,1]. What Abe has done so far cannot create permanent change by itself, but if he is able to follow through on his other goals and make lasting structural reforms to the Japanese economy and society, then we may see an economic resurgence in Japan. That's something that the West should be looking forward to and supporting, given the need for a stronger counterweight in the Asia-Pacific region to China. It was previously believed that India would take this role, but things haven't progressed there as fast as people had hoped a decade ago[2]. 0: http://www.economist.com/printedition/2013-05-18 http://www.economist.com/printedition/2013-05-18 1: http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21578052-shinzo-abe-shaking-up-japans-economy-seems-different-man-one-whose-previous http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21578052-shinzo-abe-s... 2: http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21577373-india-will-soon-have-fifth-worlds-working-age-population-it-urgently-needs-provide http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21577373-india-will-s...

smegel 13y ago

I thought the Wii was ok, it was kind of cute that an underpowered device was outselling ms and Sony for a while. But it was clearly not going to work a second time, especially after the novelty factor of the original had fallen away. Now with Kinect especially, nintendo really needed to address performance issues and come up with something more than wii 1.1

cpleppert 13y ago
Am I the only one who thinks that the tablet thing was incredibly gimmicky? It doesn't add anything and just increases the price of the console. Nintendo could've delivered a console that was significantly more powerful than the current-gen a year ago and yet would be much cheaper than the next gen. Everything about the marketing was just bizarre. I don't know of anyone who has it or even wants it.
- teamonkey 13y ago
  The Wii's 'remote' was deliberately designed to make the console more accessible. Non-gamers were still confused by games controllers, but the Wii's controller looked a bit like a TV remote - something everyone could understand. If you extend the thinking to the WiiU then you see that because more people are familiar with tablets and touch screens these days, and in fact a huge number of gamers are now on tablet devices. Adding a tablet controller would surely make the WiiU more accessible to non-gamers. You can kind of see some sort of logic there, though it doesn't seem at all inspired or with any foresight. Remember too that both Sony and Microsoft are pushing their own second screen technologies very hard this generation.
- glhaynes 13y ago
  Have you played on one? Everybody I know that's actually used one likes it a lot, and it allows gameplay possibilities that have never really been possible before. (That said, it badly needs more games.)
  - robryan 13y ago
    I think it would be holding a lot of people back from buying. Maybe it is great once you start playing, from images online though it looks weird and awkward to use.

shaggyfrog 13y ago

I'm friends with Bob. He was my team lead, twice, at EA. He's a talented developer and a great boss. Nothing at all surprises me about the mixed reaction. Some people are mad because they love Nintendo. Some are mad because they hate EA. But I haven't seen a lot of people mad because they disagree with his message -- because he's speaking the truth. Nintendo's platforms are disappointing and underwhelming. Just do a search for "Nintendo Wii U sales". It's a fact. (Yet at the same time, like Bob says, Nintendo makes great games -- it's strange how that particular comment seems to have been lost in the noise!) It's hard to tell the truth sometimes, but especially in the games industry. Gamers get emotionally attached (or opposed) to companies, platforms and games more intensely than anything else in life. Any time you say anything about anything you're risking the digital mobs coming out with the pitchforks and the torches. And we know how mobs always take the time to pause and reflect. His only mistake is not being Linus Torvalds talking about Nvidia.

Natsu 13y ago
Nintendo has been "dead" a few times now, but they've been going since the 1800s or something when they made playing cards. They also have the capacity to come up with crazy new stuff nobody ever expected. Maybe they're not doing well right now, but I have a hard time believing they're "dead." On the other side, we have EA, best known for insulting people and lying about DRM, including their ex-customers, who they like to imply are homophobes. They haven't managed anything more inventive than tired Madden retreads and they're best known as a company for having their devs toil away in the EA slave mines, where they make minor stat tweaks to Madden for 26 hours a day. As a gamer, I know which company has more credibility with me. It's not EA.
- shaggyfrog 13y ago
  The thing about sales figures is they're facts, not opinions. Finding Nintendo "more credible" than EA is an opinion that doesn't change the fact that Nintendo's platform isn't selling very well. Furthermore, you seem to be conflating two different topics. I'm not a fan of EA's DRM schemes any more than you are, but that's just not relevant in this discussion.

Millennium 13y ago

EA's greatest games were done on systems far older and less powerful than the Wii U. If all they want to do now is sell pretty pictures to easily-manipulated fratboys, then yeah; maybe the Wii U isn't for them. But then, maybe EA isn't for me.

ameen 13y ago
While I agree with part of your comment, it sparks of victimisation rather than anything. In today's multi-platform market, shoehorning a game into a system that's weaker than existing consoles is going to be painful. The fact that Nintendo's market particularly exists just for first-party games doesn't motivate 3rd party devs either. If one were to develop a modern console game with proper online functionality (multiplayer, leaderboards, dlcs, etc), doing so on Nintendo hardware would require extra efforts. It isn't as easy as getting it done on PSN or XBL. Nintendo's online system needs a much needed overhaul.

fhars 13y ago

Then this is a veiled acquisition offer, since EA has long been known as the place where great game companies go to die?

justinhj 13y ago

I think the WiiU has some great features. Playing new Mario for example looks great in HD, and at the end of each level you can post messages that other players will see. This creates the feeling that you're not in a vacuum. The WiiU is not a sales disaster; if they well only to fans of nintendos games that's still a business. EA Sports relies on flashy graphics and large US install base, so I can see why they would avoid WiiU. Professional developers need to remember when tweeting about platforms that they represent their companies.

chevas 13y ago

Nintendo is running right behind Sega and should turn itself around as soon as possible.

throwaway420 13y ago

Up until recently, I still thought that Nintendo might have had a very solid chance to recover from the tepid Wii U launch because it only takes one or two amazing, must-buy games to get a system flying off the shelves. Nintendo has had some great first party titles in the past and is certainly capable of creating some amazing experiences when they put their minds to it. But I think its become very evident that the suits, not the real creative gamers, are now running things at Nintendo. The recent Let's Play debacle where Nintendo monetizes user created YouTube videos is a relatively small example, but its a symptom of a dumb, bureaucratically led company that just doesn't get it. Most businesses DREAM of getting their customers to make free advertising for them, and Nintendo is going out of their way to stifle any incentive to create that free advertising for what amounts to pennies for a business of that size. That's something that really kills off any goodwill and support that a lot of people had for them. That's just one small example that really illustrates how far gone Nintendo is right now. PS: While the Wii U has a number of pros and cons, the console's relative lack of power is almost completely irrelevant to how fun the actual games are. That's one criticism from the article that I still argue that most people don't care about. Maybe game developers care about it, but as long as the games are fun most average people don't notice or care.