At this point, it is clear that Nintendo have a lot of third party support lined up for the NX- right now, most of Japanese publishers, such as Square Enix and Sega, seem to be on board with the system, and even western third party publishers, such as Ubisoft, Warner Bros., Take Two, and Activision, seem to be going all in on Nintendo’s upcoming system.
The one company whom we have not heard anything about the NX from, in any capacity, remains EA. EA famously refused to support the Wii U after its initial year on the market, and they never supported the Dreamcast at all- and both systems went on to bomb spectacularly on the market. That may just be coincidence, but the question of EA’s support for a new console remains a pertinent one.
In an interview with Eurogamer, EA’s COO Peter Moore was asked, point blank, about whether the company would be supporting the new console. It turns out that he refused to give a straight answer, beating around the bush a lot- though his answer certainly didn’t sound negative, per se.
“I don’t know – obviously a lot of details are still to be unveiled,” Moore said. “EA has developed for Nintendo for 30 years and I was famously quoted as saying we’re still good friends. I have lived the console cycle’s ups and downs – I launched the Dreamcast. Some publishers got behind that and some didn’t. But certainly, EA has never come out and said it won’t develop for Nintendo.”
He went on to point out that Nintendo’s success is ultimately contingent on one thing, and one thing only- Nintendo’s own first party games, which, he stressed, are ‘brilliant.’
“Nintendo has always based its success on its first-party games because it is a brilliant first-party developer,” he enthused. “If you asked that question to them they’d say they have to launch with first-party software first – that’s where the first dev kits go.”
To be fair, he’s right- EA have never said they won’t support Nintendo. The trouble is, they haven’t said that they will, either. What are we to make of this? Are they just waiting till the NX has been officially revealed, or are there really no concrete plans to support the system right now? With the NX reveal rumored to be coming in a month, we’ll have the answers soon- for now, all we can do is speculate.