EA made every effort it could to explode "Battlefield 4" onto the scene Wednesday when they revealed 17 minutes of high-octane, visually compelling campaign gameplay, much in the way they introduced "Battlefield 3" the first time around. The game is coming to Xbox 360, PS3 and PC sometime this fall, but not Nintendo's Wii U. For all the advances "Battlefield 4" is making, this is a trend EA doesn't seem to mind following.
Patrick Bach, designer on "Battlefield 4," tells Eurogamer why DICE is effectively ignore Nintendo's struggling console:
"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 utilize all the power of each console," Bach says. "It's about, where do you put your focus? And the Wii U is not a part of our focus right now."
"Battlefield 4" creative director Lars Gustavsson expresses a similar sentiment with an interview with VideoGamer.
"Sometimes, at least for us, it's focus on what you do well and what you know well, and ensure that you deliver something good than trying a bit too much, stretching yourself too thin and risking it," he says.
That the team over at DICE is worried about stuff like this isn't too surprising, considering the small backlash "Battlefield 3" received when players found out the console versions of the game weren't up to snuff, both visually and with online multiplayer player counts. They were undoubtedly the weaker versions of the game compared to the PC.
Bach mostly dodged questions about the Wii U's power and whether he though it could handle the Frostbite 3 engine, which powers "Battlefield 4" on both consoles and PC, but he did have this to say.
"The biggest problem we have right now is we don't want to back down from what we see as our low spec machines. We right now don't have support for the Wii U in the Frostbite engine. The reason for that is it takes development time. What should we focus on to create the best possible 'Battlefield' experience? We are now focused on PC and the current-gen platforms, and then there might be other platforms in the future that we can't talk about..."
Ironically, Eurogamer's interview revolves around DICE's focus on storytelling and other elements to "Battlefield 4" that weren't about the visual spectacle.
"To us, it's about the experience you create with the engine that is important. Some people care a lot about, oh, that particle system looked great, or that skin shader looked awesome. And of course that is important for us as developers. But going beyond technology, and not counting polygons, and seeing if you can get people to care about these characters, is to me a great testament of great technology," says Bach.
But we all know where the true strength of the "Battlefield" series lies, and since they aren't showing off multiplayer quite yet, the visuals are going to make it stand out.
Where Bach considers the Wii U on the specifications spectrum is difficult to tell. Third party ports surrounding the Wii U launch varied widely, from "Mass Effect 3" to "Call of Duty: Black Ops 2," in matching the technical properties of the versions on the Xbox 360 and PS3. Recently, however, EA was able to bring "Need for Speed Most Wanted U" over to the Wii U, with developer Criterion calling it the best version, sporting PC textures that were absent in the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions.
The Wii U's internal architecture is structured differently from current generation consoles, supplying more RAM and GPU power, but, by most accounts, a slightly weaker CPU. If "Battlefield 4" and the Frostbite 3 Engine are heavy on the CPU side, one might be able to understand why the port would be hard to make.
Of course, there's that other factor, which no DICE or EA representative mentioned during any interviews about "Battlefield 4" thus far. The Wii U's sales are abysmal since its release and the current user base just isn't where it should be after three or four months since launch. Seeing as how the Wii U audiences is of the more casual variety, EA would likely be better served to prepare versions for the PS4 and Microsoft's next console than hold out hope for the Wii U.
