EA Has Unannounced Wii U Games In Development, 'Dead Space 3' Isn't One Of Them

Jun 14, 2012 by Jeff Schille

Dead Space 3 Wii U EA Games

Dead Space 3, announced during EA’s E3 2012 Press Conference, is slated to launch next February. Nintendo’s Wii U, meanwhile, is due this holiday season. Needless to say, Visceral’s sci-fi action/horror adventure would be a welcome addition to Wii U’s lineup, which at this point comes up rather short in the “sci-fi action/horror” department. Too bad, then, that it’s not going to happen — though EA does have a couple of unannounced Wii U titles up its figurative sleeve.

Dead Space 2 had barely made its way to retail before Electronic Arts began talking about Dead Space 3, noting that the game would target a broader audience and dictate the fate of the franchise. Assuming that Electronic Arts would like to continue churning out Dead Space games for years to come (and I do), the logical step would be to make the game available to as many players, and on as many platforms, as possible. For whatever reason, Electronic Arts apparently doesn’t see it quite that way.

Asked by a fan on Twitter whether Dead Space 3 is on its way to Wii U, Visceral Games’ Vice President, Steve Papoutsis, shot the possibility right down.

@Angel_LiveGen not currently in the plan.

— Steve Papoutsis (@leveluptime) June 12, 2012

No reason or rationale is offered as to why Dead Space 3 is “currently” skipping Nintendo’s new console. Perhaps there are concerns that the system’s tech is insufficient for the game. Maybe Visceral had hoped that Dead Space 3′s drop-in/drop-out co-op could make use of dual GamePads — a feature no Wii U games will support initially. Whatever the reason, one of 2013′s first big third-party games won’t appear on Wii U, and that can’t make anyone happy.

With Dead Space 3 a confirmed no-show on Wii U, that leaves Mass Effect 3 as the only EA game currently announced for the system. Is EA taking a wait-and-see approach to Wii U? Not according to EA Labels President Frank Gibeau .

“We’ve got a couple of more games in development for Wii U and we’ll have a bigger line-up for Wii U than we did on the Wii.”

“Just looking at E3 and where we’re at, we wanted to hold our fire a little bit on a couple of the other games that we’re working on. We’ll have more announcements this summer on the rest of the Wii U line-up.”

Interpreting Gibeau’s remarks to mean that EA has exactly two unnancounced Wii U games in development (by contrast, Ubisoft has eight Wii U titles in the pipeline: Assassin’s Creed 3, Just Dance 4, Rayman Legends, ZombiU, Rabbids Land, Sports Connection, Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth and Your Shape Fitness Evolved 2013), what are those games? Or, rather, what is the game that isn’t Madden NFL 13?

Two Electronic Arts games from E3 2012 stand out as strong possibilities. The first is Need for Speed Most Wanted. Year in and year out, Need for Speed is one of EA’s strongest, most profitable franchises (despite the fact that The Run was not particularly good), and Wii U is conspicuously short on driving games, meaning Most Wanted would have zero competition.

Medal of Honor: Warfighter seems nearly as likely, as it is a clear priority for the publisher — though if Black Ops 2 is, as rumored, a Wii U launch title, MoH is a much riskier proposition on the platform than NFS. (For the record, I think SimCity could work extraordinarily well with Wii U’s GamePad, though its commercial prospects as a console game likely pale in comparison to those of either Medal of Honor or Need for Speed.)

Ranters, what do you make of EA’s decision not to bring Dead Space 3 to Wii U? What do you think the publisher’s unannounced Wii U games are? Let us know in the comments below.