Nintendo's goal for the Wii U was to bring on board plenty of third party developers and third party titles. It was the publisher's attempt to tell gamers that they could still be considered hardcore, even after their long association with casual gaming on the Wii. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Nintendo's attempt to court third party developers with its new console is working out too well. So far, the Wii U's have been playing catch-up with the current-gen, receiving re-releases of third party titles that have already been out long before being on Xbox 360 and PS3.
Now, after bringing FIFA, Need for Speed, and Mass Effect to the platform, EA may be jumping off the Wii U ship. According to the publisher, the Frostbite Engine 3 won't be coming to the Wii U. "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," explained DICE technical director Johan Andersson via Twitter.
This means that the Wii U won't be getting some of EA's biggest upcoming titles including the next Mass Effect, Dragon Age 3, Battlefield 4, and the unannounced Star Wars game that will be coming out of the new EA-Disney deal.
Things aren't looking good for the Wii U on the third party end. Nintendo might be able to get by this generation cruising on the power of the first party, yet again, but it won't be able to survive riding its train by itself for forever.