Topic: EA Montreal no longer focusing on Wii, switching to HD systems

actually its their loss if they continue to make games on a system that doesn't sell well. Also the only third party support the wii truly has is niche games or at least the good ones.

That may be true, however, EA Montreal was their go to company for Wii development, so it is kinda a big deal. I don't see why this restructuring has to happen though. EA has had huge success with their casual products and a couple of sports titles. Rock Band, Tiger Woods, My Sims, Nerf, Boom Blox, GST, Active etc. There were a few games that undersold but on the whole, even some real stinkers were successful. Combine that with the relatively cheap dev cost and EA should be practically swimming in money. I don't know what they expected.

I hate to be one of THOSE people but there are so many EA Wii titles that I can't stand. In fact, I can only name several that I somewhat enjoy: Medal of Honor: Heroes 2, Boom Blox series, Nitro, and Dead Space, and even then I can see how most of those titles weren't successful. Poor advertising and releasing one game too soon instead of riding out the success of the original.

EA seems to have money problems generally, so I don't think the Wii or its demographic is to blame for EA's problems, but rather spending too much money on development generally with too few big sellers generally.

I figure EA is going to get bought out or start selling off/shutting down more divisions until they get the right balance. If they can do that by catering to the PS360 crowd, then that's great, all the best to them.

I cannot see why anyone would feel betrayed, the company is pretty much fighting for its life here.

Let them hop entirely into the core market again & watch EA swirl even faster down the drain!

This should be fun to watch!

Kinda sorta their go-to company for Wii. They did the following:

SSX Blur
Boogie + Superstar
Skate It
Need for Speed: Nitro
Spore Hero (with Maxis)

None of these are exactly chart-burners. I liked Nitro, but I can't say I'm too concerned with the rest of their output on Wii, or even Army of Two.

You really can't blame them for making this move. If the profit isn't there, move to where the profit is. More and more decent third party developers will follow suit (some already have) unfortunately. If I were the studio head of a serious development team, I would keep my company as far away from Nintendo as humanly possible... and I like Nintendo, lol. For all the innovation Nintendo brought to the table (decent motion controls, rumble, DS, etc.) over the years, they still cling to the Stone Age in some important aspects in the gaming industry today (online, storage, community, etc.). For all their talk about the Wii's "unique online experience" over the years, and then not putting an optional online mode in NSMBWii (a perfect game suited for online play/competition/leaderboards/speedruns/etc.) leaves me to ponder what the heck they are thinking/doing.

SSX Blur is Pretty cool too, did not know that was them.

Ive enjoyed quite a few 3rd party Wii games and hope for good ones in the future.

To Kevohki - SD Cards Solved a lot of storage problems - also 'an optional online mode in NSMBWii' sounds like it could have potential but we are talking about a 2D platformer here.

I'm pretty sure they were thinking that online isn't key to the success of the Wii and sinking massive money into new infrastructure when this console generation could well have been their last would be a fatal mistake. Online may be the future, but it is not relevant to the Wii's current success. Nitendo is most interested in using it as a channel for selling things like downloadable games and other content, but online-enabled games really aren't relevant to the majority of Wii owners, full stop. I expect the next Nintendo console will have a stronger online experience because Nintendo has greatly recovered from the missteps with the N64 and the Gamecube, but they really are playing in their own sandbox right now.

Honestly, the biggest problem with third party support that focus on "hardcore" games is they just don't seem to get what makes a great hardcore title. It seems like they think "Okay, add copius amounts of blood, cussing, and more dead bodies than you can shake a stick at and we'll call it good". I appreciate what Sega is bringing to the table with Madworld and HOTD: Overkill, but they both lack something inherent to those great first party Big N titles: challange and heart. I honestly have yet to play an EA game other than Boom Blox (which was incredible fun until the random gallery shoot fest at that last quarter of the ga
e), but honestly I haven't been too interested in their offerings, for the most part. So I can't say I'll miss them. I'll be giving my money to Konami next month for some Silent Hill action, so here's hoping I don't regret it.

EA suffered a loss with the HD consoles the reason they shifted resources to Wii. Dead Space and Mirror's Edge both undersold, at least initially, and Brutal Legend I don't think is doing too hot either. With all those Wii games published by EA, most of them sold over 400,000. That's not too shabby imo. Spore Hero sort of looks bad now, but I think it's still selling. Only a handful of their Wii titles seem to have sold depressingly poor (boom blox 2, Dead Space to name two). Again I don't see what their problem is. How much did they spend on marketing and dev cost for their titles to not be successful at 400,000 to a million? I hate think that a publisher was that incompetent in their investments knowing the Wii market and all.

Also, what do you mean "follow suit?" Many 3rd parties weren't on the Wii bandwagon to begin with. I don't see Sega saying "Well we suck, time to make games on HD systems." Same goes for Hudson and several others. Konami is finally trying their hand at a big name franchise with Wii as the core platform, Ubi Soft has upped their quality in the past year with Shaun White 1 & 2, Rabbids go Home, and Red Steel. You make it sound like some 3rd parties actually defected. Which ones are you talking about exactly?

SSX Blur (Wii)
Boogie Superstar (Wii)
Skate It (Wii)
Need for Speed: Nitro (Wii)
Spore Hero (Wii)

These are the games that I can think of that they have made for the Wii. Did someone mention Tiger Woods PGA too? I thought they all set to make a series of great wiimotionplus golf games like with "10"?

Those games are generally either 7 or 8/10 games so I would say that it IS a bit of a loss for the Wii. I'm only interested in Need For Speed personally. A lack of a Wii sequel is a blow w.r.t. that game, for me personally.

I believe Tiger Woods was made by their tiburon studio, the same team that makes the games for the HD consoles. EA Montreal also makes the My Sims series.

Errr...to those just dismissing this as no big loss I've got to disagree. EA is good company and is a regonised 'brand' even by the 'casual market'. They have consistently made mostly superb sports sims from 16 bit era to now. Who will replace them in this genre on wii??
They have made some fantastic racers and now also produce the Burnout titles (which are some of the best racing games last gen and this one) and the Need for speed franchise of which some of the games have been great (see the recent 'SHIFT' for example.)
In recent years they have ventured into other genres with some success (i.e Dead Space,Boom Blox,EA active and yes some casual stuff,which a lot of people enjoy remember...not me ,but still..)
so I for one will miss them.Granted I have a 360 so I can get my fix there but Tiger Woods on Wii is the finest sporting game ever made and it's a shame if we don't see what else they could do with WM+ in other titles.
I can understand that some people dislike them with their kinda corporate image and some of the OTT cheese that permeate some of their material. And their yearly updates,which have made big improvments in recent years generally speaking.,but are Nintendo really that much different in that respect,what with the endless Mario games (not that I'm complaing mind you..),but still .As someone else mentioned they are just trying to make a profit and if EA are struggling then that is not good news for the once thought of 'recession proof' games industry. I for one will miss them (well not really cause of my 360..but you know...the thoughts there.. )

I have always liked EA's stuff tbh,the casual games too; But aren't we talking about the Montreal division here?

I'm not into the MySims series BUT that is a big franchise on the Wii isn't it?! Hoh boy.

All I wanted was a good FIFA game ... and then they made FIFA 10 for Wii...

Um, EA isn't pulling out of Wii development, this division is. It remains to be seen what EA's future is with regard to the Wii.

Aww man no Nitro sequel was hoping for online in the next instalment, at least we got one good game from that series though

Just because this team isn't doing Wii development, doesn't mean that some other team in EA couldn't do a sequel to Nitro!

Oh yeah totally forgot that there might be another need for speed on the Wii developed by Criterion (makers of Burnout). Yay!

THAT would be awesome