Electronic Arts: "Very Few Multi-Platform Titles Are Succeeding On Wii"

Even though Electronic Arts says they're happy with their most recent financial performance, EA CEO John Riccitiello blamed struggles to succeed on the Wii as a continuing issue for the company. Riccitiello pointed to the disappointing sales of Madden NFL 2010, a game he called "very, very strong," as something EA needed to work on solving hand-in-hand with Nintendo themselves.

"To be honest," he said, "the Wii platform has a been a little weaker than we had certainly anticipated and there's no lack of frustration to be doing that at precisely the time where we have the strongest third party share. We're reaching out to Nintendo to find ways to partner to push third-party software harder. I frankly think they [Nintendo] need more beats in the year than what they get out of a first party slate to be able to have the Wii software platform perform as well as they would like."

Such criticism comes not long after Nintendo president Satoru Iwata admitted Wii sales are "not healthy," especially in Japan, and much of the blame falls on software failing to excite users.

This wasn't a complaint EA had earlier this year, after seeing initial blockbuster sales for EA Sports Active, seen as a complement to Nintendo's own Wii Fit. EA Sports Active did well enough that EA actually moved development staff off Grand Slam Tennis on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 to beef up the team working on the recently released expansion pack for EA Sports Active.

"Wii is where we're missing it," said Riccitiello, echoing previous statements. "I really do think that the opportunity exists to find different ways to partner with the first party [Nintendo] in this case to help establish in the minds of the consumer legitimacy of some of these other brands when they're going out multi-platform because very, very few multi-platform titles are succeeding on the Wii so far."

Riccitiello argued that Nintendo needs to take the lead on making consumers more aware of great games on their platform, games that aren't necessarily made by Nintendo. EA has remained one of the most bullish third-parties on Wii, but in addition to lower-than-expected sales for Madden NFL 2010, Dead Space: Extraction underperformed in its first month, too, selling just 9,000 copies.

"Collectively," he continued, "Electronic Arts and Nintendo need to tackle that."

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