Electronic Arts will resume full support for Wii U when it "becomes a viable platform" on which to sell games, says EA Labels president Frank Gibeau.

In a rare and shocking move, EA confirmed last month that there will be no FIFA 14 on Wii Ufollowing "disappointing" sales of FIFA 13 on the console. Likewise, other EA sports titles, including Madden NFL 25 will also skip the Nintendo machine.

And while the firm's CFO Blake Jorgensen pledged that the firm does have games in development for Wii U -despite prior reports - he admitted that it's "not anywhere near as many as we are for PS or Xbox".

Gibeau told Joystiq this week that Nintendo must "sell more boxes" for EA to resume full support for the platform.

"Look, the only thing they can do to fix it is to sell more boxes. We're a rational company, we go where the audience is. We publish games where we think we can make a great game and hit a big audience, and make money. That's why we're here, that's why we have an industry," said Gibeau.

"The Wii U, we shipped four games. We shipped Madden, FIFA, Need for Speed and Mass Effect. In fact, the last Need for Speed shipped 60 days ago had a pretty good Metacritic. It was a good game. It wasn't a schlocky port, we actually put extra effort into getting everything to work. And it's just not selling because there's no boxes," he added.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/414679/ea-will-resume-wii-u-support-when-its-a-viable-platform/

The shot themselves in the foot with FIFA, Madden and Mass Effect so never got a true metric of the WiiU user base's appetite for their games.

A small user-base was only one part of the problem so I don't see exactly how they are going to be able to determine when the WiiU has reached viability for them. I fear that by the time they decide to get back on board WiiU users will have learned to live without them or gotten a second console. If history has taught us anything it's that third parties need to have a presence from launch to have a chance to succeed on Nintendo consoles.

Bold: Isn't that true for all consoles?

I do agree that once they would come back, it's too late. Had they a proper showing this holiday, then they could have build on that year after year.

For the first time they actually gave a straightforward answer, and for that I commend them.

None of this Wii U can't handle this, or Wii U hasn't got that. It's the simple fact that Wii U hasn't been selling well and so making games on it doesn't make sense for them financially.

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Fair, but they'd better keep their word. For the record, Ubisoft, Activision, and Warner Bros. seem to consider the console a viable platform right now.

As does Disney, so EA had better get used to thinking of the Wii U as a viable platform, because they're going to be publishing Star Wars games for it.

Are there sale numbers for WiiU only? It would be interesting to compare other consoles versus games sales with the WiiU (I.e. console to game ratio). Damn, feeling like doing a PhD here...perhaps Nintendo could fund me ?

Eh...so support will resume in 6 months then?

So when It outsells the XboxONE will they drop support for Microsoft's console?

great. Now can they shut up about it? I dont really care about their little feud with nintendo.