david.dakota Posted May 8, 2013 Posted May 8, 2013 This is unprecedented support. In a nutshell it seems that some of EA's big name titles will completely miss Wii U due to its inability to run the Frostbite engine; these titles include Battlefield 4, Mass Effect 4, Dragon Age 3, Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel, Need For Speed 2013 and its unannounced Star Wars titles from Visceral and DICE. DICE technical director Johan Andersson explains "FB3 has never been running on WiiU. We did some tests with not too promising results with FB2 & chose not to go down that path". The full article is over at Eurogamer. Thoughts.
nekunando Posted May 8, 2013 Posted May 8, 2013 If they actually made some games that I liked, maybe I'd care..
Josh64 Posted May 8, 2013 Posted May 8, 2013 I don't really care for any of those games but maaaan, this is terrible for Wii U. Some of those games are huge.
Rowan Posted May 8, 2013 Posted May 8, 2013 FIFA 15 will be on a new engine so you can almost certainly count that one out too.
Daft Posted May 8, 2013 Posted May 8, 2013 I call bullshit. Aren't they contracted to bring FIFA to all platforms?
-Dem0- Posted May 8, 2013 Posted May 8, 2013 Well FIFA isn't a part of this and it wasn't mentioned in the article either.
liger05 Posted May 8, 2013 Posted May 8, 2013 Frostbyte or not I aint convinced the games would be coming to the Wii U but the specs of the Wii U gives them the perfect excuse.
madeinbeats Posted May 8, 2013 Posted May 8, 2013 (edited) EA are contracting as a company; laying off staff. They're hedging their bets and focusing their human resource. They believe their main consumer base is on MS & Sony consoles - and they'd be right. Wii U has to get their attention by expanding its install base and thus become more viable, then they may invest in a Wii U version of FB3; the engine which is already ported for the PS3 & 360. Maybe Nintendo has the option to financially subsidise such projects or titles. Who knows if they do, or, if they would. This situation could easily change if/when Nintendo drives Wii U install base. Frostbyte or not I aint convinced the games would be coming to the Wii U but the specs of the Wii U gives them the perfect excuse. Not when it's already ported to the PS3 & 360 it doesn't. Edited May 8, 2013 by madeinbeats Automerged Doublepost
Hogge Posted May 8, 2013 Posted May 8, 2013 If you compare the Wii U with the Dreamcast, I hope Nintendo do like Sega back in those days. No Need for Speed? Here's some Metropolis Street Racer in your face, EA! Then have some Sega Rally, Sega GT and Daytona USA. No sports titles? Well, chew on the far supperior Sega Sports line up! The only FB3 game I want is Mass Effect 4.
liger05 Posted May 8, 2013 Posted May 8, 2013 If you compare the Wii U with the Dreamcast, I hope Nintendo do like Sega back in those days.No Need for Speed? Here's some Metropolis Street Racer in your face, EA! Then have some Sega Rally, Sega GT and Daytona USA. No sports titles? Well, chew on the far supperior Sega Sports line up! The only FB3 game I want is Mass Effect 4. They should of been doing that simply cos history say's nintendo cannot rely on 3rd party support. With that being in mind they should of been/or be looking to produce there own titles that trends in the west show are popular. FPS, Racers, sports titles etc. What Sega did was great. The only sports title they lacked was a football game but first time I played NFL2K1, Madden was a distant memory.
Ramar Posted May 8, 2013 Posted May 8, 2013 If you compare the Wii U with the Dreamcast, I hope Nintendo do like Sega back in those days.No Need for Speed? Here's some Metropolis Street Racer in your face, EA! Then have some Sega Rally, Sega GT and Daytona USA. No sports titles? Well, chew on the far supperior Sega Sports line up! The only FB3 game I want is Mass Effect 4. That would be great but Nintendo have a terrible record of making their sports games: 1) About Mario and chums 2) Crap (Ok, some aren't, but Mario Tennis hasn't got shit on Virtua Tennis on Dreamcast).
Dcubed Posted May 8, 2013 Posted May 8, 2013 (edited) That quote is such unadulterated bullshit. It can't run Frostbite 2, but PS360 can? Piss off EA simply didn't want it to happen. End of. I call bullshit. Aren't they contracted to bring FIFA to all platforms? They are... as far as the old license went. However, they just signed a new licensing agreement today with FIFA that runs till 2020, so who knows what sneaky get-out clauses they've managed to weave into that contract this time... Edited May 8, 2013 by Dcubed
Grazza Posted May 8, 2013 Posted May 8, 2013 Oh well, let's just hope people don't still like EA games.
-Dem0- Posted May 8, 2013 Posted May 8, 2013 I just want a decent, non-gimped football simulation for my Wii U.
Dcubed Posted May 8, 2013 Posted May 8, 2013 I just want a decent, non-gimped football simulation for my Wii U. Better hope that Konami pulls its finger out with PES then...
Miharin Posted May 8, 2013 Posted May 8, 2013 This was to be expected... I don't understand what Nintendo was thinking, making another one generation less powerful console... Just like we missed Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Battlefield etc. on Wii, so will we miss their new incarnations on Wii U. I never expected anything else. Nintendo was all about how there's gonna be awesome 3rd party support and there were good launch titles from other then current consoles (ME3, Batman etc.) but of course they won't bother to port coming PS4/X720 games for Wii U.
nekunando Posted May 8, 2013 Posted May 8, 2013 I know that I'm unlikely to miss any of EA's output, as I highlighted earlier, but something like this certainly increases the chances of Wii U "failing" If the Wii U does continue to struggle, though, it may finally force Nintendo to pull their head out of their ass and wise the hell up in future
Sheikah Posted May 9, 2013 Posted May 9, 2013 Well this was inevitable. Not only in that Nintendo are incompetents who haven't worked to encourage 3rd party support, but also because the Wii U probably won't be capable of running the next generation of titles that will appear on Xbox/PS4 without time and effort making separate versions. One poor move after another.
Mokong Posted May 9, 2013 Posted May 9, 2013 This whole "Frostbyte 3 won't run on the Wii U" thing is EA just looking for excuses. As others have said they've ported it to the PS3 and 360 so porting it to the Wii U is not impossible it's likely EA just don't want to do the work to make it work. EA have done a totall 180 since they took to the stage at the Nintendo Presser to announce their "unprecedented partnership" with Nintendo and one of their execs even refered to the Wii U as "the first next-generation console" when talking after that E3...flashforward to this year and suddenly EA don't class the Wii U as so called "next-gen" anymore? Something went on between EA and Nintendo that soured relations be it those Origin rumors or something else. Here's a great article someone posted yesterday in the Wii U Discussion thread on the EA situation http://playeressence.com/eas-unprecedented-partnership-with-nintendo-and-other-fairy-tails/ Here's the part in releation to Frostbyte Battlefield 4 runs on the Frostbite 3 engine which is an updated version of the Frostbite 2 engine that powered Battlefield 3. Both of these engines run on the PS3 and 360, yet the Technical Director for the engine had this to say on Twitter, “FB3 has never been running on Wii U. We did some tests with not too promising results with FB2 & chose not to go down that path” Here’s where things get pretty technical, I apologize and will try to explain it as best I can. The Xbox 360 uses a 3.2Ghz Tri-core, multi-threaded CPU that uses in-order execution and has long pipelines while the Wii U has a 1.24 Ghz Tri-core, single-threaded CPU that uses out-of-order execution with short pipelines. On the surface this looks bad, but really it is the exact opposite. Yes, the clock speed is slower but it uses newer chip, so it is more efficient at handling tasks. A longer pipeline means that if there is a fault early on, all of the data is wasted and it must finish its way through before the task can be started over. A shorter pipeline means that if there is a fault, it doesn’t take as long to start over regardless of where it happens. Think of the in-order and out-of-order execution like lines at the grocery store. With in-order there is one line and even if you have less stuff, you have to wait for the person in front of you. With out-of-order, an employee sees you standing there with a basket of items rather than a cart, opens up the express lane so you are able to leave your line and check out. This is a heavily simplified explanation, but you get the general idea. Out-of-order is more efficient and eliminates the need for multithreading, which is why it only has a single thread. This is also why some launch ports on the Wii U run a little bit worse as out-of-order execution can only do so much when the game is specifically coded to utilize multithreading. That was just the CPU, now on to the GPU. The 360 GPU is capable of Directx 9, and has 10mb of DRAM available to it elsewhere on the motherboard. The Wii U GPU is heavily customized to the point that “tech-heads” and people who analyze die shots for a living can’t tell what chip it is derived from, much less what 30% of it actually does. That being said, it is heavily rumored to contain Directx 11 equivalent functions, and has 32mb of eDRAM available. eDRAM allows for faster access than DRAM and at a higher bandwidth since it is embedded right onto the GPU. The system also utilizes GPGPU processing which allows the GPU to handle functions that would normally be executed by the CPU, reducing the strain all-around. There are far more technical aspects I could get into, but my point has been made. So what does this have to do with Frostbite 3, EA, Battlefield and so on? If the 360 can run the Frostbite 3 engine, there is absolutely no technical reason the Wii U couldn’t run it. I suspect that DICE “tested” the Frostbite 2 engine on the Wii U using non-finalized dev kits, and treated it the same as the 360. This would explain the “not too promising results” they experienced due to the fact that the systems have two completely different architectures and cannot be programmed in the same manner. What is most baffling to me is that they didn’t get one engine to work, so they didn’t even try to get the next one running. If at first you don’t succeed; try, try again right?
madeinbeats Posted May 9, 2013 Posted May 9, 2013 (edited) We can't brush over the fact EA are making huge cutbacks at the minute. It's unfortunate that they feel they should look past the Wii U. Until they feel they can gain valuable ROI out of Wii U, they will continue to try and bend Nintendo over a barrel and weasel money out of them like they probably did with Crysis 3. Nintendo don't give into threats of buggery because they feel they are big enough, will they still feel they are big enough with 15 titles falling off the cliff? I think the tweets this story have originated from have been blown out of context. Someone said FB was running on Wii U and the guy said no, we only did some early tests, and somehow that's turned into 'wii u isn't powerful enough '. Obviously there's a reluctance on EAs part and the internet continued to drive the EA Origin legend, but for me there's too much evidence to suggest it's more money, ROI, business related. It does need addressing either way. Investors need answers as much as the wii u fans and owners who were made promises of better 3rd party. You could even say the whole EA on stage with Nintendo at E3 needs publicly retracting. Edited May 9, 2013 by madeinbeats
Londragon Posted May 9, 2013 Posted May 9, 2013 It does need public retraction. Then, it needs both companies during E3 to show us what's happening in the future between them. Whether that's sweet FA or something else due to NDA's, etc. The past is history, let's move on, and buy those great games coming to the WiiU this year. Even if EA did bring great games to the table, I wouldn't have the time or money to spend on them with Nintendo's, Eidos' and Ubisoft's offerings.
madeinbeats Posted May 9, 2013 Posted May 9, 2013 Just take a look at how many sites have twisted the story though: https://news.google.co.uk/news/story?q=nintendo&hl=en&gbv=2&prmd=ivnsu&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ncl=dQnMOOnfhq0GQ6Mnst0YguZQAChMM&sa=X&ei=U2qLUYiCF8fg7QagwYHAAg&ved=0CD0QqgIoBDAC Now look at how that contradicts their statements over their recent business shake-up: EA went on to say that they have managed to ‘eliminate expenses’ on next gen research and development by ditching platforms they don’t think have ‘long-term potential’. Since Frostbite 3 doesn’t support the Wii U, we can assume that it’s Nintendo’s latest home console EA is talking about. http://www.godisageek.com/2013/05/ea-hint-halt-wii-rd-concentrates-gen-consoles/
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