Another nail in the Wii U's coffin: Madden

On thinking about it, given EA's recent history in their Madden releases on Nintendo platforms (the "All-Play" series on the Wii and that comically horrible Madden NFL 3DS launch game), I kind of wonder if anyone would want to see them continue putting Madden out on the Wii U. Maybe EA is just doing everyone a favor. :P

@dick_world_order: That's not "poosee"! Even though it's almost as funny.

@hailinel: All right, I shall (try to) remember that.

EDIT: I thought to write "I'm a dude also", but then I thought up the term "exchange sexes", a term that could only be relevant when people are behind fake names and pictures on the internet, and that's just goddamn uncomfortable. Food for thought.

I'm very disappointed in Nintendo. I'm sure I will eventually buy one, but one never knows.

I dare say we have found our spiritual forum successor to "that's million bucks". ;)

I don't really think that Nintendo fans are gonna lose a lot of sleep over not being able to play Madden on the Wii U. But I think it's important to see that this is another developer saying, "Hey, we're not gonna develop this game for the Wii U, but it will be available on the other next-gen consoles." I don't think this one game/publisher will make or break the Wii U, but Nintendo needs to find a way to get some more third-party support if they want it to even get close to the Wii's sales figures.

You're not the only one disappointed.

As for the Madden snub, I'm not completely shocked. I think Madden is going through a transition phase right now as it gets ready for more powerful consoles. Plus, it's probably a smart business move to skip the Wii U. However, we all know the success of Nintendo consoles depend heavily on first-party support so Nintendo is the only one who can ultimately nail up their own coffin if they choose.

I've oddly never registered your avatar as that. Instead, you look like a very angry rabbit. I say this having played Pokemon Conquest.

The title of this thread is fucking bullshit. The Wii U's coffin doesn't have room for more nails.

...A rabbit? How did you come to that conclusion?

By looking at it? That's about it: I saw your avatar and registered it as "rabbit".

I can kinda see that if you only quickly glanced at it, but a half-second's attention makes it seem like something else. 'Course, someone had a picture of Mara (of SMT) as their avatar and it took me a while to realize that it was a penis with a mouth.

Where is your avatar from, Hailinel?

@believer258: It's a (comically doctored) drawing of Ginchiyo Tachibana that I believe originally came from a 4-koma I found on the internet a long while back.

Why did you make this thread? You've made it very clear that you don't like Nintendo, why do you continue bringing up shit you apparently hate so much? do you get some kind of weird satisfaction out of this? And don't give us the "lol I was just reporting" bullshit, your entire tone (and posting history) shows an obvious conflict of interest.

@believer258 said:

I am really tempted to post that clip from From Dusk Till Dawn where Cheech Marin gives his whole schpeel before they get into the club. But I don't know how inappropriate that is, and I don't want to get in trouble, so I'll hold off. That's all this exchange reminded me of, though.

Regarding the topic of the thread, though, I don't think I've ever heard of someone who buys Madden every year and prefers to get it on anything other than the XBox or the Playstation, so this development doesn't really surprise me. If anything, those same people will probably buy the next iteration of their main Madden console to play the new games when the time comes around that they stop making them for the 360 and PS3.

Then again, aside from the Tiger Woods PGA Tour games, I can't say that I remember the last time EA really made a considerable effort at making a game for the original Wii (they've been releasing other sports games like Fifa, but didn't someone make a big stink about that because those were basically the same game with roster updates?), so there's that.

Their first Madden on the Wii, Madden 07, actually reviewed better than other versions at the time simply because the motion controls were actually pretty well thought-out for a first attempt, and the fact that the game just tried something honest-to-god different. Though even then, it was still a Madden game with all of the other baggage that implies. Their Tiger Woods games using Motion Plus were fairly well-received, too. Beyond that? Ehhh...

@hailinel said:

That's true. Unfortunately, the people who were/are really hardcore about Madden probably didn't care enough about the novelty of motion controls for them to go for the Wii version instead of the one for the system on which they've already been playing with their friends. If anything, they might have bought the Wii version in addition to whatever other version they mainly play. However, I can't say for certain; I'm just speculating, so I could easily be wrong.

And aside from the EA Sports games, the only notable EA games for the Wii that I can think of are the Boom Blox games and Dead Space: Extraction, and while these games may have been successful, that's only three games in the approximately 6 or so years during which the Wii was prominent, so... yeah.

I can't really say how this is exactly a death-blow to the Wii U. It took a long time (and a price drop) for the 3DS to start being successful, and it seems to be doing just fine now, so hopefully, once the big first-party games and other big exclusives like The Wonderful 101 and Bayonetta 2 start coming out, the Wii U will start picking up speed.

I love what you've done here. It deserves more appreciation.

My completely uninformed opinion: I think this is worrisome. Its gonna come down to only getting any support from first party. This has kinda been how Nintendo has always operated but the games that showed up on everything like Madden still made their way to the Nintendo system. I dunno...I'm worried. Well, I'm not but you know what I mean.

As long as it isn't overtly insensitive, you should be fine.

If you want to play football, go outside and throw one! wtf

Also, is history repeating itself where Electronic Arts killed off a Sega platform because it didn't support it? Or was that CAPCOM thing?

I love all these outlandish comments people are posting.
For a second there, I thought i was on r/gaming.

Are they still putting out anything on the WiiU? I may be ignorant but I cant think of anything noticable coming out for the system since its launch. My roomate bought one day 1 and he hasnt bought a game for it since. It hasnt been turned on since like 3 days after launch. Does Nintendo care about this thing? Understand I may be off base here just judging from how much we use the WiiU and what my roomate has for it.

I've bought quite a few games for mine, it just requires more effort to find good games because there is no marketing whatsoever. I recently bought Injustice: Gods Among Us, Lego City Undercover, and Need For Speed: Most Wanted: all of which I'm enjoying immensely. There's also some good eShop titles too, my favorite being Nano Assault Neo.

I see would probably just buy those for 360 though if I were to get them. I'm more talking about games that would justify the WiiU's existance or games that aren't already on current gen systems. Lego Undercover Wii only? Are there a decent amount of people playing these games online? At least Pikmin is coming soon but man does the release schedule look grim for this thing. Don't mean to be negative towards the WiiU but man this thing bums me out.

@laserbolts: Yes, Lego City Undercover is a Wii U exclusive. I see what you mean, but I think most people in general don't seem to remember what console launches are like. Very few consoles don't pick up steam until at least a year or two after their release. Considering how much I'm already playing the Wii U, I'd say it's had one of the better console launches in my time. A lot of the best systems had pretty barren launches, the SNES, PS2, PS3, etc... all took a couple years to really get going. I find all the doom and gloom over the system quite bewildering, but maybe I'm just old and a lot of you guys don't have the historical perspective that I do?

just for curiosity.. who the hell are you talking to?

The Op (OP: Opening poster). You know, the guy that created the thread.

well.. jeeeez that is some sensitive skin right there...

Yeah ... that was confusing. If course, if Nintendo was also aiming for the 10 year life span that Sony say they aim for with their consoles, missing out on Madden '25 would've meant EA had stopped 2 years earlier than planned, I guess?

Either way, this isn't the first time EA have favored a non-Nintendo console for their sports games, and I think the SNES did alright. While I doubt Nintendo will be able to turn this thing around and make the WiiU a new SNES, I don't think these sports games really make or break a machine.

Some fanboys are pretty insane.

Its funny how everyone seems to want the death of one of the video game industrys pillars so badly.

I don't get it... he was just being informative.

Exactly nail in the coffin may be jumping the gun a little but still the fact that they wont get Madden on the system certainly wont help it at all and can worry some people about the future of this thing. Huge games like Madden are a big reason why videogames have the success they do.

I dunno. My 3DS sucked pretty hard for a long time. It came around eventually. I'm sure it'll have about 10 great games by the end of its life cycle. N64 didn't do any better than that. Just too bad they might not get many mediocre games to fill in the gaps.

Wait, I got lost in this quote tree. Who's the insane fanboy here and why?

@jdh5153 said:

The original DS had a very slow start too, as did the PS3, PSP, 3DS, original Xbox and Wii before going on to sell.. how many millions? The Wii U has been out for less than 6 months, so counting it out already is being hilariously short sighted. System sales do tend to massively pick up once they start getting a better library of games, which will most likely happen for the Wii U when we start getting closer to things like Smash Brothers and the new Zelda or Mario games.

EA put out their shovelware sports games to make as much money as possible from the biggest user bases, it's not exactly rare for them to skip new consoles. While that might be a bad sign for Nintendo, it doesn't mean things won't have changed by next year and I doubt the type of people who are likely to be interested in the Wii U are the same sorts who sit around playing Fifa/Madden. You're painting the situation to be far worse than it actually is. There's no coffin, let alone nails to be in it.

There is a fanboy in all of us

There is a fanboy in all of us

Ehhh what? I can name 2 games at the top of my head that sold more than Madden 13 in 2012, CoD and Fifa 13.

Finally someone who gets it. I feel like this is the first console launch people on this site have been through, as far as I'm concerned the Wii U has been pretty standard fare as far as console launches go. I'd actually go as far to say that it's been a pretty decent launch overall.

Finally someone who gets it. I feel like this is the first console launch people on this site have been through, as far as I'm concerned the Wii U has been pretty standard fare as far as console launches go. I'd actually go as far to say that it's been a pretty decent launch overall.

people are saying this is irrelevant to the core nintendo audience (which it probably is) but consoles sales aren't only built on hardcore fans, you need to appeal to the masses in a way which i don't think mario/zelda do anymore. at this point CoD/Madden are probably more culturally relevant (in the states at least) than those 2 previously mentioned titles.

i honestly think this kind of thing could be the start of a really bad trend for nintendo. i dont get who they appeal to anymore besides the hardest of hardcore fans seeing as how smartphones/tablets have eaten their casual market and microsoft/sony have monopolized a good portion of the more dedicated market.

it kind of bums me out but i don't love nintendo hardware, i love their software and in my wildest dreams they would be completely dedicated to making only software.

@extomar said:

If you're thinking Dreamcast, they weren't killed off by anything software related (their answer for Madden was the well regarded NFL 2K series). The Dreamcast just couldn't compete with the PS2 launch.

But yeah, I'm in the camp that also sees this as a bad sign for the Wii U. I don't care for Madden that much, but it does pull in sales if it has the install base to do so. Just look at how long EA kept on releasing Madden for the PS2. This is kinda of EA showing it has no faith in the Wii U. Since EA has rights to the NFL license, I dunno if we will see something like a 2K series coming up for the Wii U to serve that audience.

IT's a discussion forum. This is a topic to discuss. Why make it seem like that is an issue? If you don't like it, check out another thread maybe?

Every single one of those Maddens you listed was released on either GameCube, Wii, or both. Most of them also received GBA and/or DS versions. This actually is a very bad sign for Nintendo.

Yeah, but most other things had something to play at launch. The Nintendo 64 had Super Mario 64, the Gamecube had Luigi's Mansion, the Wii had Twilight Princess, what does the Wii U really have out right now that is anything to be excited about?

Note that I'm not saying it has nails in its coffin either, but the system definitely has issues for now. It can be saved. But a re-release of Wind Waker, a third Pikmin game, and Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem aren't going to be system sellers, at least not enough to make it as popular as it really needs to be.

Madden? Not a good sign, but I hardly think that's anything approaching a nail in Nintendo's coffin.

I don't think people are really suggesting that Madden for the Wii U would have been special, interesting, or extraordinary but people are fretting that there isn't enough software of any type on the Wii U where canceling any titles at this point, titles that are an easy sell as well, prolongs the pain.

It's kind of amazing how much I'm being reminded of the dreamcast by the wii u, it released a year before a bigger/more technically powerful console, it had a screen in the controller, and ea said they wouldn't support it.

The only difference is 6 months into the dc life cycle it had a few awesome games and the wii u ain't really had any outstanding titles yet.