EA's Riccitiello Critical of Nintendo

Nintendo has always been infamous for having trouble rallying quality third party support for their consoles. While Nintendo itself is and has always been able to create widely accepted first party titles, they have always been criticized for not doing more to promote and support third parties on their consoles. Unfortunately, it appears little has changed, as recently EA's CEO John Riccitiello spoke out to GameIndustry.biz, criticizing the Wii.

When speaking to investors, Riccitiello openly discussed EA's disappointment with how their games have been performing on the console. "To be honest with you, I think the Wii platform has been a little weaker than we had certainly anticipated." Riccitiello would continue to explain how he feels EA is releasing some of its best content on the system, and Nintendo isn't doing their games justice. "There is no lack of frustration to be doing that at precisely the time where we have the strongest third-party share," Riccitiello commented.

John Riccitiello also brought up an intriguing point, discussing what he thought was the reason the Wii's sales have been slipping of late. "Frankly, I think they need more beats in the year than they get out of a first-party slate – to be able to have the Wii software platform perform as well as they would like." The solution for getting more of these "beats" on the console every year? Riccitiello made a very interesting suggestion, in that Nintendo should team up with more third parties (obviously including EA) to further support third parties, as well as Nintendo's own content. "We are reaching out to Nintendo to find ways to partner to push third-party software harder."

Riccitiello specifically wants to push multiplatform releases harder. In EA's eyes, it is their Wii iterations of multiplatform games that aren't selling to their potential. Because "very, very few multiplatform titles are succeeding on the Wii," Riccitiello feels partnering with Nintendo will allow these titles to be more easily recognized by consumers as games worth purchasing.

Whether or not you agree with Riccitiello's statements, everyone can agree that it is a troubling sign for EA to be so publicly upset with Nintendo.