No Wii U games ‘in development’ at any EA studios

The Wii U won’t be getting any new games from Electronic Arts in the foreseeable future, a spokesperson for the publisher confirmed yeseterday. “We have no games in development for the Wii U currently,” the spokesperson revealed to Kotaku. This doesn’t mean that EA will never again release a game for Nintendo’s latest console, just that there’s nothing on the current release calendar and nothing in development.

Former EA CEO John Riccitiello stood on a stage at E3 less than two years ago and vowed that the company would support the Wii U. He made a stirring case for the new Nintendo console, and was in fact the first at the press conference unveiling to actually use the word “console” in reference to the Wii U. The publisher released a handful of ports following the console’s launch in November 2012 – Mass Effect 3, Need For Speed Most Wanted, and the latest Madden and FIFA games – but that’s it.

The Wii U’s apparent inability to handle EA’s Frostbite 3 game engine may be partially to blame. The game engine does not run on the new Nintendo hardware, as DICE’s Frostbite technical director Johan Andersson tweeted last week. Speculation that EA and Disney’s new Star Wars games won’t appear on Wii U immediately followed that revelation, since those games are expected to be built on Frostbite. It also means no Battlefield 4 for Wii U either, but then we knew that already given that game’s fall 2013 release window and EA’s empty Wii U calendar.

The EA spokesperson also discussed the company’s support for the PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s next Xbox – set to be revealed next Tuesday, May 21 – with Kotaku, so be sure to read the full report. In other recent Frostbite news, the high-tech game engine from DICE will soon head to mobile iOS and Android devices in the form of Frostbite Go.