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[Opinion] Gearbox’s reason for not putting Borderlands on Wii U is more baloney than this pseudo gaming-journalist can handle

Posted on November 26, 2012 by (@NE_Austin) in Features, Podcast Stories, Wii U


Game publishers and developers shove nonsense into our faces a lot, and most of the time we just say “Yea, that’s cool. It makes sense.”, even when it doesn’t.

Well, I feel like I don’t want to take that anymore. At least for today.


Author: Austin

I wouldn’t be writing this feature if the response to last night’s quote from Gearbox regarding why Borderlands wouldn’t be coming to Wii U was different. If bloggers and pseudo-journalists had called them out and said “Hey, you know what, that reason makes absolutely no sense!”, I wouldn’t be furiously (okay, not furiously– that’s a word to make it seem more exciting) typing away right now, anxious to tell you all why this is a bunch of baloney.

For those who missed it, here’s the quote:


“We get asked if there is going to be a Wii U version of Borderlands, and the reason why there’s not is because we couldn’t think of a natural, obvious, ‘OMG, I want that for what the Wii U brings to the table’ feature.” – Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford


If you don’t think too hard, this makes sense. If there isn’t anything special to get out of a console, why bother bringing your game to it? That’s artistic integrity. Right?

Okay, sure. Let’s play along with this idea for a minute. Here’s a counter-question for you:

“What does the Xbox 360 ‘bring to the table’ in particular?”

Another question:

“What does the PS3 ‘bring to the table’ that the Xbox 360 DOESN’T?”

Answer: Noffin’. They’re just houses for the game because the hardware is powerful enough to run it, and the neat thing about this is that the Wii U is powerful enough to run it as well. They may have to work around the weaker processor, but given Nintendo’s history of abnormal console construction slash hardware design, I’m sure that they could find a way to shift “loads” and power “things” up and overclock “stuff” and whatever. I don’t really know anything about tech, but it’s doable.



So a more literal translation of the Gearbox quote would be something like this:


“We get asked if there is going to be a Wii U version of Borderlands, and the reason why there’s not is because we don’t want to put the time and effort into making one. We understand that there is a small audience for it, but unfortunately we have bigger fish to fry. Sorry about that!” – Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford


And guess what: That would have been fine. No one would have grabbed their pitchforks and called them “bullshitters” (as many people are) or “baloney-spewers” (as I prefer to call them), and they probably would have won some credibility points from people for just giving it to us straight.

It’s not fair of us to expect every publisher or developer to go after every market every day, and I wish people could just level with each other and cut the baloney.

Because if you don’t cut the baloney, it’s hard to make a tasty baloney sandwich of trust and wonder.

Or something.




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