Last month, Nintendo unveiled the Switch, as well as the list of third party partners for the system, and surprised everybody by revealing that EA was indeed working on games for the system. Nintendo and EA have had a rocky relationship- EA famously abandoned the Wii U (arguably leading to the exodus of third party games on the system), and had refused to commit outright to supporting Nintendo’s next system. In fact, according to rumors, things had not been going too well on that front.
However, here we are, and it sounds like EA will be supporting Nintendo after all. During the UBS Global Technology Conference (via DualShockers), Electronic Arts Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen discussed what kind of support the Switch will be getting, assuring that the Switch will be getting one of EA’s bigger games, but sound very uncertain on future, long term support.
“In terms of Nintendo, in their announcement they announced that we’ll be supporting with a game or two on that new platform,” he said. “We haven’t yet announced what game, but you should assume that it’s one of our bigger games we’ve been involved with.”
Unlike other publishers, EA also doesn’t necessarily sound too hot on the prospects of the Switch- while Jorgensen didn’t outright say that the Switch may fail, he did say that its long term success was not guaranteed yet.
“We’re excited for Nintendo, it’s an interesting device, but I can’t yet predict how broad it’s going to be, and will people be interested in a portable device alongside their regular portable device that they have.”
To be fair, that’s certainly a level headed and more transparent answer than the infamous ‘unprecedented partnership’ that EA was going to have with Nintendo on the Wii U, so- I mean, while I’m a bit worried about EA bailing out early on Switch support now, at least they’ve also not mislead people as much this time.
