Need for Speed: Rivals was never expected to come to Wii U based on some of the statements EA has made as of late. Still, NowGamer wanted an asked.

When asked why Rivals isn’t planned for Wii U, executive producer Marcus Nilsson explained:

“From an EA perspective, we look at different console strategies and different platforms and what makes sense for return of investment, what makes sense from tech development and also what do people want to work on. In this particular case, for Rivals at least, Wii U is not one of the platforms.”

After seeing how well Need for Speed: Most Wanted performed on Wii U from a technical standpoint, it’s a shame that the system will be missing out on Rivals. It would have been nice to see how this latest racer stacked up on Nintendo’s console.

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The Wonderful 101 could have been called “Centi Men”, according to director Hideki Kamiya. That was one of a few names that had been considered early on in development.

Kamiya revealed to NintendoWorldReport in an interview:

“Before Wonderful 101, and actually before Wonderful 100 was an idea, there were a lot of ideas. One of those ideas was “Centi Men”. So, on one hand, based on the characters in the game there’s wordplay with sentinels, and also because of the visual design that aesthetic lends to the idea of these little figures, which was suitable for that name, Centi Men. So at that point we had even made designs with the chest pattern, but that was sort of one stop on a road that went through a lot of different ideas, which is pretty typical.”

Later in the interview, Kamiya was asked about The Wonderful 101’s slow start in Japan and whether the game’s poor sales could potentially impact future development. Kamiya responded my speaking about Platinum’s committment to making high-quality games:

“A really important philosophy at Platinum Games is that we absolutely do not want to compromise on quality, and if the quality is there then we gain a trust from fans and if we get trust from fans then that will ultimately result in a satisfying response from users. So, that’s a number one priority and as long as we maintain that high standard for quality and respect and garnered trust from users, then, from Platinum Games’ perspective, that’s something that will allow us to continue forward uninhibited.”

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RUSH is one of three classic games Two Tribes is bringing to Wii U. On Twitter earlier today, Two Tribes lead programmer Eelke Schipper gave a look at the title running on Nintendo’s console. Take a look below:

RUSH, along with EDGE and Toki Tori, are expected on the eShop sometime in the near future.

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Nintendo has reiterated interest in encouraging indies to bring free-to-play games to the eShop. In an interview with GameSpot, manager of business development Dan Adelman said:

“Free-to-play is something that’s relatively new to us, and we allow it and we’ve got some games in the pipeline that are planning on supporting that.”

Continuing on the idea of new business models we haven’t seen previously, Adelman spoke about Nintendo’s openness when it comes to new ideas:

“Oh, definitely open to ideas. And we’ve already got a long list of things we’d like to support and we’re developing out the back-end to put those hooks in and make it more flexible. Nothing specific to announce right now. But there’s a dedicated team in Japan right now that’s working on building out the functionality, so as we hear about new ideas, new things that people want to do, we want to be able to respond very quickly to those opportunities.”

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Toki Tori 2+ was confirmed for Europe yesterday. Today, developer Two Tribes noted on Twitter that the game update will also be available in North America. Toki Tori 2+ will go live in both territories on Thursday.

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The boxart is a bit blurry – we enlarged the image so that it could actually be seen. We’ll be getting a larger (and therefore clearer) image soon I imagine, but this will do for now.

One interesting note: Super Mario 3D World’s boxart has the Nintendo Network logo. I wonder what that means for the game…

Thanks to Tim for the tip.