Nintendo stormed the world in late 2006 with the Wii, a console that sold faster than any console in history and oftentimes in it's early years sold twice the amount per month that the PS3 and Xbox 360 sold combined. But in recent times Nintendo has struggled to gain any traction, oftentimes seeming like an afterthought and scraping by on sub-40K units a month sales in the United States. Numbers that low aren't just bad, they're shockingly bad and usually only seen by aging platforms on their way to retirement. To say the WiiU is struggling is an understatement, it seems more like a case of being stillborn.
In this sad state of affairs for the Big N, who managed to get a decently positive reception at their E3 Nintendo Direct broadcast based on the exclusive titles Bayonetta 2 and X, the wrap up to their E3 week came with EA making a public statement that's certain to cause some corporate hand-wringing. In an interview with CVG, EA Labels president Frank Gibeau had the following to say:
"Gibeau told Joystiq this week that Nintendo must "sell more boxes" for EA to resume full support for the platform."Also of mention in the article were a number of annual EA sports games, which typically release on as many devices as humanly possible, passing on WiiU this year. This is not a good sign for Nintendo, who is already facing a continual downward revision of their forecasts, has a stagnating handheld market and has a CEO who will likely be forced to live up to his promise of resigning if Nintendo doesn't make their fiscal year goals. At this stage, with third party games support rapidly drying up and industry trendsetters like EA starting the ball rolling on publishers and developers actively making it public knowledge they are abandoning the platform, I think it's only a matter of whether Iwata remains CEO for the full year or resigns his commission early.
Even though I have been a critic of Nintendo in recent years due to their localization failures, their increasingly repetitive game releases, their long droughts of software support on their platforms and their inability to adapt to modern internet fucntionality in regards to online accounts and transactions, it really is sad to see them in this shape. Nintendo was a vital part of my childhood and it's amazing that the company which brought us so many all-time classics now can't figure out how to stop their recently launched platforms from dying on the vine. With exclusives like X and Bayonetta 2, along with the inevitable high definition Legend of Zelda, it would be nice if they could get in touch with the gaming audience at large again, but it seems they are struggling to even comprehend how to begin.
I suspect EA sounding off on dropping support will be a catalyst for more companies to follow suit and begin removing WiiU from their mutliplatform strategies. Hopefully the Big N can turn the momentum around and regain the support of the third party publishers, if for no other reason than to become a worthwhile opponent to the seemingly increasing juggernaut of Sony's Playstation 4 and help insure that good competition will keep Sony from regaining the incredible arrogance they displayed prior to the PS3 launch.
