There’s a good reason why Wii games tend to be unique even when they’re part of a popular Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 franchise: EA Sports boss Peter Moore says one does not simply port down to the Wii.
Speaking at the MI6 conference in San Francisco last week, Moore said developing games for the Wii needs to be a “ground-up” process, according to a Nintendo Dpad report. “You simply can’t take what you’re doing on the PS3 and Xbox and port – thats a dirty word- down to the Wii,” he said.
The Wii is substantially different from the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 – which are substantially similar – and its reduced processing power and motion-sensing controller means developers can, and often must, make significant changes to games developed for the Wii even when they’re directly tied in to existing franchises. EA Sports has a Wii-specific All Play brand and Moore noted that prior to Grand Slam Tennis for the Wii, which comes out in June, “EA has never shipped a tennis game.”
EA CEO John Riccitiello recently said the company wanted to rival Nintendo itself in development for the Wii and promised a major focus on games for the platform. Sports titles like tennis and golf are particularly well-suited to the Wii controls but EA is also putting the system’s strengths to use in less obvious ways, such as in Dead Space: Extraction, a rail shooter based on EA’s hit survival horror franchise, due out in fall of this year.
