At the beginning of January we learned that Crytek was more than willing to port Crysis 3 over to the Wii U hardware. Ultimately they didn’t because EA and Nintendo decided it just wasn’t worth it from a business perspective. Both publisher and platform holder didn’t think the game would sell enough to warrant the cost of publishing.
Two months on from that and Crytek president Cevat Yerli has revealed that they actually had the game running on the Wii U before it got canceled. Not only that, but the developer was “very close to launching it” according to Yerli.
His comments were made during an interview with GamesBeat where he went on to say there was no business support from EA or Nintendo for the game. There was also no way for Crytek to self-publish the game as they don’t hold the rights–EA does.
So to be clear, both Nintendo and EA rejected a game that was already running on the hardware and ready to launch, is an established series that is guaranteed to sell units, and is currently topping the sales charts on other competing platforms.
What possible reason is there not to release that game? Did they think it wouldn’t even make back the cost of producing the discs and marketing? Or was it a case that they decided Wii U owners were not the type of audience that would be interested in buying the FPS?
Whatever the case, it seems likely that if Nintendo is happy to make such a decision for Crysis 3, then other games in the same genre could meet a similar fate.
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