Battlefield 3 unlikely for Wii U, nothing concrete planned for the console yet
During Nintendo’s E3 2011 presentation, EA’s John Riccitello came up on stage to discuss how excited he was about the Wii U. He asked fans to “imagine” what some of the company’s franchise would be like on the console, including Battlefield. Because of this, some people automatically assumed that Battlefield 3 was a shoe-in for the system.
That’s not actually the case. Battlefield 3 is unlikely to be released for the Wii U because it “is so far out” according to DICE’s Patrick Liu. Moreover, the studio says that “there is nothing planned” for the hardware just yet,
GC: Moving on a bit, and thinking again of what you’re be working on post launch, was a Wii U version of Battlefield 3 ever confirmed? It was certainly heavily hinted at during E3, but we don’t think EA ever came out and announced it?
PL: No, I think what he [EA boss John Riccitello] said was that we’re looking into what we can do with the Wii U, but there is nothing planned to be honest.
GC: Do DICE have devkits for the Wii U?
PL: Yeah, we always have all the new platforms. So, we’ve dabbled with it and looked what we can do with it, but there’s no game planned.
GC: Presumably if the Wii U is a bit more powerful than the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 that definitely makes it of interest to you? Particularly in terms of creating a version of Battlefield 3? If you ignore any business questions presumably there’s no reason why you wouldn’t want to do it?
PL: No, and that’s exactly the reason we’re looking into it. But I’m a big fan of Nintendo myself, just looking at what they’ve done with the Wii and the Wii U… but we have to come up with something that really uses their controls. And until we get that bright idea of what to do with the new controls I don’t think there’s any point in making another version that’s just the same as everyone else.
GC: We’d imagine a big touchscreen map on the controller would be very helpful though, in a Battlefield game?
PL: Yeah, and that’s one of the most obvious features that we could do. But I would think that we would try to do something even more innovative.
GC: So would you consider a completely separate game then, rather than a port? Battlefield U or something?
PL: I don’t know…. It probably wouldn’t be Battlefield 3 anyway because the Wii U is so far out. It’s not out yet.
