DICE Says No to Frostbite 3 on Wii U

The tech that is set to bring Battlefield 4, Dragon Age 3 and a new Mass Effect to life will not be usable on the Wii U.

In an interview with Eurogamer, DICE’s Battlefield Executive Producer Patrick Bach looked to put a cap on why the Nintendo Wii U would not be getting the upcoming iteration of the popular first-person shooter series. Calling the console a “low-spec machine,” his reasoning is that they don’t wish to downplay their product by releasing inferior versions on less equipped devices.

“We right now don’t have support for the Wii U in the Frostbite engine, we don’t want to back down from what we see as our low-spec machines.”

By “low-spec machines,” he is also referring to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, alongside the Wii U. On the contrary though, Battlefield 4 will be released for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, with the main build being the PC version. A PlayStation 4 release is also planned, so talk about not being worried about scaling back to previous generation technology.

When asked if it utilizing the touch screen controller was holding back the console, Bach referenced a hypothetical PlayStation Vita port and why such a project would undermine their vision.

“We could probably make a Wii U game in theory. But to make the most out of the Wii U, that’s a different game because of the different peripherals. We want to utilise all the power of each console. But what would that game be? Is it something we could scale down from what you saw in the gameplay video, or would it have to be a complete redesign of the whole game?”

Fair enough. Bringing a touch screen into the fray would only serve to complicated Battlefield‘s relatively simple formula of destruction, so why bother rebuilding the whole game with just a touch screen in mix?

“It’s about, where do you put your focus? And the Wii U is not a part of our focus right now.”

What’s more concerning is EA’s attitude towards the Wii U. When it comes to the console, EA never gives up a chance to really say what they think about it. First, they declined it admission into their “gen-four” categorization of consoles, and now they have straight up called it a “low-spec machine.” It’s not too far from the truth and Nintendo has a lot of work to do in convincing such a large third-party publisher to take them seriously if it wants to compete.