Despite Nintendo's best efforts, it seems the Wii U just can't get any traction with AAA titles. Shortly after the announcement that the upcoming Star Wars games from DICE and Visceral would be running on the Frostbite 3 engine, DICE technical director Johan Andersson was asked if these games would ever be released on the Wii U.
Andersson replied that Frostbite 3 and the Wii U simply do not get along.
"[Frostbite 3] has never been running on Wii U," Andersson tweeted. "We did some tests with not too promising results with [Frostbite 2] & chose not to go down that path."
This confirms a previous statement from DICE's Patrick Bach that while the company could probably make a Wii U game in theory," they are not interested in devoting the development time required to make it work.
"To make the most out of the Wii U, that's a different game because of the different peripherals," Bach said. "We want to utilize all the power of each console... It's about 'where do you put your focus?' And the Wii U is not a part of our focus right now."
Some commentators point out the fact that if the Wii U, technically a "next-gen" system, could not even run Frostbite 2, how will it be feasible for it to run anything graphics-intensive down the line? After all, the Xbox 360 and PS3 had no problem handling Battlefield 3, which ran on the Frostbite 2 engine.
If nothing else, Nintendo will be facing an uphill battle against the PS4 and Microsoft's next-gen console, both rumored to launch later this year, if they want to continue pushing for AAA titles. Nintendo made a killing with the Wii convincing non-gamers to pick up a controller; but if they want to grab that core demographic, their hardware is really going to need a boost.