EA Has No Games in Development For Nintendo's Wii U
Less than two years after vowing to deliver on an “unprecedented partnership” with Nintendo, gaming giant EA is quiet on the Wii U front. “We have no games in development for the Wii U currently,” company spokesperson Jeff Brown told Kotaku yesterday.
Context & Ripple Effects
The statement walks back EA's own 2011 launch-window promise of an 'unprecedented partnership' with Nintendo, made when the Wii U pitch was still fresh. Since then the relationship has cooled quietly: Nintendo reported 400K Wii U units sold at launch with Reggie Fils-Aime calling the console essentially sold out, and in April 2013 Fils-Aime publicly committed to a 'dramatically' increased pace of releases — a promise that presumed strong third-party pipelines like EA's.
The timing compounds pressure on both sides. EA confirmed layoffs of roughly 900 staff — about 10 percent of its workforce — on its May 2013 earnings call, so portfolio triage was already underway, and the company had spent the spring managing fallout from the SimCity DRM launch even as that game sold massively. Kotaku's scoop travelled unusually wide for a single spokesperson quote, picked up same-week by the BBC, Forbes, The Verge, Joystiq and Digital Trends, which signals how sensitive the Wii U's third-party story had become.
First-order effects
- Wii U owners lose the near-term prospect of EA's major franchises on the platform, thinning the console's software lineup exactly when Fils-Aime has pledged a faster release cadence.
- Nintendo enters the 2013 E3 season without its most vocal launch partner, forcing its showcase to lean harder on first-party titles and its growing digital business, where Fire Emblem alone moved roughly 80,000 digital units in April.
Second-order effects
- Other third-party publishers now have a public data point for deprioritizing Wii U SKUs, since EA's retreat lowers the cost of doing the same and raises the risk of being the last big publisher supporting a small install base.
- Nintendo's counter-lever is exclusivity and digital pricing on its own properties — leaning into the opportunity cost of exclusive content to give buyers a reason the hardware exists without multiplatform blockbusters.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, console launches get judged on install-base momentum within months rather than years, creating a self-reinforcing cycle where thin third-party lineups suppress hardware sales, which in turn justify further publisher pullouts.
- The episode points toward a market where new entrants can no longer assume broad third-party support at launch and must plan around first-party software carrying the platform through its vulnerable early period — a discipline Nintendo knows from the original Wii's supply-constrained era.
The trend: Third-party publisher support for consoles is consolidating around proven install bases, leaving newer platforms increasingly dependent on first-party exclusives to survive their launch windows.