Over the past year, we’ve heard a lot from Crytek on the Wii U and whether Crysis 3 would be coming to the console. At first there was some hope, but then late last year Crytek squashed those hopes once and for all. We previously reported that the lack of Crysis 3 on the Wii U was largely a business matter, but now it’s revealed that the developer actually had a running version of the game and was very close to releasing it.
According to Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli, the company had a finished version of Crysis 3 up and running on the Wii U, but because of EA and Nintendo’s current feud, the project was abandoned. They were close to releasing it, but the bad business relationship between Nintendo and EA prevented the release. Yerli said:
“We did have Crysis 3 running on the Wii U. We were very close to launching it. But there was a lack of business support between Nintendo and EA on that. Since we as a company couldn’t launch on the Wii U ourselves — we don’t have a publishing license — Crysis 3 on Wii U had to die.”
Looks like it’s okay to stop blaming Crytek for not supporting the Wii U with games, as it appears it was EA’s decision. Crytek was one of the first game engine makers to officially announce its game engine technology on the Wii U.
The relationship between EA and Nintendo has been a rocky one. It all started with the development of the Wii U, where EA wanted Nintendo to run its entire online infrastructure on EA’s Origin platform.
Obviously, that’s a ridiculous demand and Nintendo walked away from the negotiations. In return, EA hasn’t supported the Wii U with any major releases besides Mass Effect 3.
