- Nintendo og EA brydde seg ikke om NFS til Wii U

I forrige uke annonserte Criterion-grunnleggerne Alex Ward og Fiona Sperry at de hadde startet et nytt og uavhengig studio kalt Three Fields Entertainment.

Meldingen kom på Twitter, hvor det nyetablerte studioet skrev at de sannsynligvis ikke kom til å lage spill til Nintendos Wii U.

I etterkant har Alex Ward fortalt mer om omstendighetene, og særlig hvordan EA og Nintendo ikke støttet en Wii U-utgave av Need for Speed: Most Wanted. Dette skal ha drevet ham til å forlate Criterion, og heller gjøre noe på egenhånd.

Snakket begynte da en bruker anklagde Ward for ikke å støtte Nintendos konsoll, og deretter klage over at den ikke solgte godt nok. "Totally wrong. I did,", skriver Ward. "Second, I complained when the company didnt even bother to press the discs with our game on."

Etter flere kommentarer fra samme bruker, skriver Ward: "Hey, we worked our arses off. Neither NTDO or EA gave a shit about it. A group of us did try... Bitch and moan at the publishers not the developers."

På spørsmål om han kjenner til noen konflikt mellom EA og Nintendo, skriver Ward: "we just did the coding. Like we had any choice over when it was released? Or the price? Everyone is so quick to blame the developers. Folks worked through New Year to deliver that. We tried to do our best. We even flew to NTDO to personally demo in a bid for mktg support. There was none."

"The game was not even physically released initally in Europe. Members of the team could not even buy their own game. Do you think we were happy about that? Idris, Rob, Chris, Paul, Jim did what was asked of them. Everyone else let us down. Stuff like that pissed me off hence I left EA and have started my own company using my savings."

"So seeing as our families won't eat if we fuck up, we will choose our platforms carefully," konkluderer Ward. Du kan lese hele utvekslingen her