Need for Speed Wii U and Vita sales don't warrant Rivals ports
Oh, how briefly EA respected the Wii U and Vita as consoles deserving of typical AAA fare. Both received ports of 2012's Need for Speed: Most Wanted but are missing out on this year's entry in the racing series, Rivals. The answer to why was pretty clear, but Rivals developer Ghost Games has stated it plainly: Most Wanted didn't sell enough to be worth the effort again.
Oh, how briefly EA respected the Wii U and Vita as consoles deserving of typical AAA fare. Both received ports of 2012's Need for Speed: Most Wanted but are missing out on this year's entry in the racing series, Rivals. The answer to why was pretty clear, but Rivals developer Ghost Games has stated it plainly: Most Wanted didn't sell enough to be worth the effort again.
"Honestly, it's not the kind of stuff that I like talking about in detail, that much. We did a load of extra work on the Wii U version, and we had a lot of guys working on that stuff, you know?" creative director Craig Sullivan told thesixthaxis. "It didn't really sell that many, in terms of the Wii U market. I would love for it to have, because we put so much effort into that, trust me. I'd love for it to be way bigger than it was, and the same for the Vita."
Sullivan explained that with "over 200" people working on Rivals across five platforms, "we had to go with where we think the biggest audience will be for the game, and that's where we are."
Bringing the Frostbite 3 engine and its games to Wii U is clearly a pretty low priority for EA. Battlefield 4 is skipping it too, lest the dev team stretch itself too thin.
Need for Speed: Rivals is due November 19 on PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3, followed by Xbox One and PS4 versions on November 22.
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replyAlice O'Connor posted a new article, Need for Speed Wii U and Vita sales don't warrant Rivals ports.
Oh, how briefly EA respected the Wii U and Vita as consoles deserving of typical AAA fare. Both received ports of 2012's Need for Speed: Most Wanted but are missing out on this year's entry in the racing series, Rivals. The answer to why was pretty clear, but Rivals developer Ghost Games has stated it plainly: Most Wanted didn't sell enough to be worth the effort again.-
We don't have the hard data. But if the costs to port these games didn't even cover the cost of whatever it is that they did to port it over then that would be a total waste. However If it did. If it covered the bare minimum an argument could be made (and I am sure it was) that they should port Rivals to WiiU also. Because some representation and some market share is better than none. The longer you are in a space, the longer your brand is represented and has more shelf life the more likely it is to sell, even if its trickling. At least that would be my argument AND lots of work has already been done and this would and should cut cost in porting Rivals over to the second time around.
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Even nintendo isn't making enough money to cover developing for the WiiU. Even their first and second party titles are starting to sell dreadful numbers on the WiiU.. Unless something amazing happens, I don't see the WiiU making it to Christmas 2014.
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everything has an opportunity cost. There's some non trivial number of man hours required to do a port. If the worst case is losing money and the best case is a very small profit then that's not a very enticing opportunity cost unless you really have no other options. But EA has tons of other options. They could put those man hours towards their mainline releases on Xbox/PS, they could develop more DLC, etc. If they want to grow the brand they'd be better off allocating those resources to mobile/web games and reaching new sets of customers. What percentage of the Wii U install base isn't just people who already own another console/PC and are well aware of EA titles and capable of buying them with or without a Wii U?
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EA said the Wii U couldn't handle the engine for it and now they're saying it's due to sales?
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It was always due to sales, or possibly bad blood between the two companies. Anything that can run on an Xbox 360 can be made to run on a Wii U, and Frostbite is no exception.
The people who bash the Wii U for not being powerful enough yet make X360/PS3 versions have always been full of shit.
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