“At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn’t developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports’ Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as ‘crap’ and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. ‘The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet’, tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA’s no-Wii U news. ‘Nintendo are walking dead at this point’.” The Wii U is turning into the 21st century’s Virtual Boy.
Well, when you’re right, you’re right
Indeed. Nintendo should’ve took a lesson from Sega and never delved into gimmicky, poorly quality controlled crap.
What are you talking about?
Also Thom: How’s sales going of Wii U vs Windows phones?
Edit: Never mind, I see from the post below that it’s likely the software on the WiiU.
Edited 2013-05-19 01:45 UTC
I don’t care about what an EA employee or commercial media says… all the extremely negative comments about Wii U hardware is total bullshit. Nonsense biased lies. I just realised that when I actually tried a Wii U at my best friend house.
Let me tell you this: Wii U is an _amazing_ piece of hardware.
At hardware level Wii U is great, you got PS3-like performance in an small, silent and sleek box that let’s you stream the games to the gamepad and play them remotely lying in your bed or in the bathroom.
I’m a geek like everybody else here in OSNews and believe me: I was completely amazed by the streaming technology that the gamepad uses. It’s perfect, no lag, no sound glitches, instant responsiveness, works like a swiss clock. Incredible. Miles ahead of AirPlay, DNLA or any other streaming technology that I tried before.
I had a lot of concerns about Wii U just like everybody else… until I actually tried one. It rocks and It rocks hard and you must give it a try. I hope that Nintendo fix the lack of games. That’s the only REAL problem that this (six month old) console got.
I was going to post a detailed story too, but you said almost exactly what I would have. My best friend got one for his three kids for Christmas and it’s by far the most innovative console I’ve ever used. The controller/tablet concept alone is phenomenal.
…how can you SAY that??? It has none if the inventive EA titles like Madden 2008, Madden 2009. Madden 2010, Madden 2011, Madden 2012, Madden 2013 or even Madden 2059. Not to even mention FIFA 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 etc etc etc etc ad infinitum.
Clearly you are mistaken.
Ha! 🙂
Well considering that the Sega Dreamcast is and will remain my favorite console of all time, I suppose it makes sense that I like the Wii U so much. It’s innovative and quirky, and once it inevitably drops in price I’ll pick one up.
“Dreamcast” is for sure the best name ever for a console (IMHO).
If I want to play games in my bed or on the crapper, I already have a device to do that with. It’s called a 3DS. And unlike the Wii U, it actually has games I want to play. Consoles are about playing games ON A f–kING TV. That’s why they’re called consoles, not tablets
And yes, I have played a Wii U tablet game. Raymand Legends at Best Buy, and it was terrible.
Edited 2013-05-19 06:34 UTC
3DS is a 2 years old console you know… the first year of 3DS was dry too do you remember?
I mean, I agree with you, Wii U have a problem with its catalogue… but the aggressiveness level against Wii U is something unseen before.
Developers calling it crap, games ready to be released cancelled for no reason, game engines cancelled for “lack of processing power”… and 10 minutes later the same game engine is released for android phones!! (this is no joke, it’s real)
Gimme a break man, the companies slamming Wii U got an agenda, they’re not being honest about the product for some reason that We don’t know.
Oh, I think the reason it’s very clear: they think the product sucks. Also “being honest” and “agreeing with you” are not the same thing, FYI.
Edited 2013-05-22 04:19 UTC
Pretty sure 90% of the big wigs also said the PS3 would never last…just saying. Now look at how big the PS3 actually became, the WiiU does continue to push thousands of units so I don’t see it dying anytime soon.
The 3DS also had a crap start and people said the same, isn’t it absolutely flying now to the point that it’s games are constantly in the top 10 of sales charts of all consoles put together?
This is from an owner of the WiiU I agree with what a lot of nay-sayers are saying about it, the software is awful my console crashes constantly, the battery life of the pad is shocking as well (but then so are the battery lifes of all smart phones so meh…batteries are always an issue).
What really annoys me is when the controller dies, you plug it in, turn it back on…all of it seems to crash. Come on Nintendo you are losing this one.
The interface is so slow all the time it makes me sad, it takes a good 20-30 seconds to come out of the damn settings menu for god sake while that’s not a lot of time when you look at it from a time perspective, but when you are waiting it’s a life time in reality.
It needs some serious hard-hitting exclusives that aren’t the tired old Mario games (seriously why do people go nuts over a plumber jumping platforms in 2013?!).
Edited 2013-05-18 21:28 UTC
I am curious. I expected at least Xbox360 level power and DX11 graphics. Not a beast but just powerful enough to run any xbox360 and ps3 port. Now developers and publishers claim that the Wii U is less powerful than an xbox360 that is 7 years old.
Don’t you think Wii U will have the same problem with regard to games as the Wii did? Which was of course a great success but only because everybody wanted to try the gimmick. How many great games were there for Wii?
it was more powerful then a 360 but weaker then ps3. which clearly was a mistake. On top of a controller that cost like 150$ for a extra one.
at 30% cpu and 30% memory bandwidth it is far below xbox360
No one has a clue here.
The PS3 is much weaker than the 360 technically, Sony marketing somehow made everyone believe that and succeeded. The truth is that PS3 games only look better because they are first party, kind of like Nintendo with first party Wii games.
The Wii U is stronger than both because it has DX10 level hardware, but ages behind anything PS4 or XBOX720 will be.
Every SPU is easily 4+ times faster than PPC core even on PPC optimized code despite they have similar specs on paper. SPU optimized code could run 10x faster. So in reality CELL is in other league.
It is easy to achieve high utilization on SPU in contrast to PPC core stalling in pipe bubbles and LHS.
Battlefield3 @ PS3 uses DX11-like rendering pipeline running on CELL.
What you don’t see getting publicity is there are also developers who state the WiiU is more powerful than the 360 and PS3 but it just doesn’t make as good a headline as the ones who nay-say it sadly.
I’m unsure, the problem the Wii had is its graphics where just too far behind for real gamers to want it where as the WiiU will be able to handle decent graphics so only time will tell, we just have to see about the games.
They need to sort the software out BADLY though.
WiiU is DX10 level hardware, which means that even if CPU/GPU are slower, it can do everything more efficiently if the code is written properly for it.
This doesn’t make a lot of a difference at first because on PC, most games coming out during the DX10 era still used DX9 for compatibility, thanks to microsoft’s ridiculous decision to not support DX10 on Windows XP, but there are several rendering techniques that can be improved enormously under DX10 level hardware.
YES! And provide an online store where only adults can buy digital stuff. That way all Nintendos worries about ‘the children’ can be taken away and you might get a steam light.
Also because PS4 will be a gamepc I pronounce them the winners of this console generation. Just being able to easily port to PS4 will make sure it will be flooded with games. If PS4 then makes it easy for indies to publish digitally to PS4 they will have a bigger hit than PS3+Wii.
Only Sony can make the PS4 flop.
can’t blame him there. It’s shit anyway you look at it.
Until mario/zelda/metroid/donkey kong/animal crossing/smash brothers and their other franchises come to another platform, there is a market for it.
Nintendo’s games are a hell of a lot better than EA’s, IMO. They stay inventive, even if they keep reusing the same characters.
Nintendo moving to steam would be incredible, IMO.
Here’s hoping this generation is their last for non-portable hardware, for the sake of getting their titles for the PC.
Edited 2013-05-18 22:07 UTC
EA are full of bullshit. It seems like they are having a war of words against Nintendo. Guess they never forgave them for the NES. As for the Xbox 360 being more powerful than Wii U, what a load of rubbish.
EA Games. Now that’s crap. Look who’s talking.
If EA stops supporting a system, the average quality of games released on that system would drastically rise. With this rise of quality comes an inevitable loss of sales to these “sports fans” type people. Almost everything EA releases is garbage, but admittedly garbage that sells. And don’t even get me started on their EA Sports line–I’ll just say, the only people who give a damn traditionally about those games are mainstream, non-gamer types.
I’m not so sure I like the way Nintendo is going these days, I admit, somewhat alienating their traditional hardcore fans in many ways (that hurts as a fan since I was young), but for EA to be slamming Nintendo’s quality… now that’s some serious LMFAO material right there. EA can’t touch Nintendo’s traditional quality. They never did, they never will. But they have produced a pretty good game here and there over time… just not many.
Edited 2013-05-19 01:28 UTC
Maybe they are trash talking it down so they can buy it and .. well.. whatever EA do with brands they buy.
Usually EA does to gaming companies what Symantec does to PC companies. They buy them and then destroy everything that was once good about them, and the only remains are left in history.
Gamers calls SimCity 2013 ‘crap’
The series’ best was the SNES SimCity version. Where the series should have ended.
But see, EA is king of beating a dead horse until every last drop of milk is extracted. That is their strategy, and sadly, it works. People keep buying the same junk over and over, long after it had its decline.
Hell, no. Simcity 2000 ftw.
Right. EA Sports, the guys who hasn’t come out with anything new or inventive in what, 15 years?
Edited 2013-05-19 04:45 UTC
Seriously, businesses should not let their employees post things like this. I hope this guy was quickly fired.
The WiiU specs are not spectacular, but they are certainly better than the Xbox 360 – better CPU & GPU plus HDMI. My original 360 lacks HDMI and can only run component.
When I am ready to get an eighth generation console, I have decided it will be the WiiU.
The PS4 is out because I am not going to repurchase all of my PS1, PS2, and PS3 titles, yet again. The PS4 hardware is too different to even play PS3 titles so they will have to be purchased through PSN. I do not like the Sony Cloud idea at all. I also greatly dislike the damned inclusion of a Facebook specific button on the controller. Seriously? A Facebook button?!
There are so many rumors around the next Xbox but thus far, if it becomes true that it will require an always on connection and that older titles or used games can’t be played, they can bite me. The Xbox Live service is getting too intrusive as it is.
Now I admit to not being a big EA Sports fan so not getting these titles means nothing to me. I love the original Nintendo titles – Kirby, Mario, Zelda, etc. And I really enjoy FPS and jRPG’s, so I will be set on the WiiU just like I have been on the Gamecube and Wii. I am in no hurry but these types of ‘pronouncements’ usually turn out wrong. The Wii was also going to fail. The 3DS sucked. The new Xbox 360 won’t be any better than the original. Blah blah blah.
Totally agree. Did you see the size and energy consumption of the thing? It’s pretty amazing taking into account PS3’s and 360’s (even the recent “slim” releases are huge).
Another thing that surprised me is that You can play with Wii U for hours and it never gets hot. I think it’s even colder than the original Wii.
I know that nobody but me cares about these things on a console but I think these details talks about the quality of a product and how well it’s designed and made. Not a crappy product at all.
People shouldn’t be allowed to have their own opinions as long as they work for someone? I’m sorry, but I definitely do not agree. People should have the right to voice their own opinion and they definitely shouldn’t get fired for that.
I agree, they definitely should have the right to voice their opinion.
But if you say something publicly that hurts your company’s reputation or bottom line, they have the right to fire you. That’s just how the corporate world works.
I’m glad it doesn’t work that way here in Finland. Here you are allowed to have an opinion and voice it, you only get sanctions if you portray your opinion as official company stance.
As MOS6510 said below, it depends on the company’s policies, the manner in which you voice your opinion, and many other factors. And it’s not just limited to corporations. I work in law enforcement, and if I post anything negative on my Facebook page, personal blog, Twitter account, G+ etc. about law enforcement in general or my department specifically, I am pretty much automatically fired. Notice I said law enforcement generally, as in the entire profession. Even though I’m not an officer myself (I’m a terminal operator, though I am certified as a jail officer too), I can say something as simple as “that sucked when those cops in Texas beat up that homeless guy” and I’d be subject to termination.
Of course that is here in the U.S., but it also holds true in many European countries. British companies in particular are fond of sacking outspoken employees for badmouthing the competition, even after apologies and sanctions are given all around. Like wise in Japan, where criminal charges can even be filed.
Speaking of that, there is also the ever present danger of being sued for libel if you say something financially damaging to another company. It doesn’t matter if you’re the company spokesperson or not, if you go public with an accusation and it’s later found to be false as well as damaging to your adversary, you’re liable.
As with any case where you have the right to free speech, you also have the responsibility of dealing with the consequences. I greatly enjoy the fact that I have the right in my country to say whatever I want, but I also don’t go around screaming “fire” in a crowded space.
Well, there’s one thing that overrides any corporate policy: the law.
I’m sure he’s free to resign and he can then spend all day voicing his opinion on a wide range of subjects.
Business is not a democracy, just like for example the army and sports team aren’t. They all have goals and objectives, they are not Internet forums where people carry no responsibility and say whatever crap they care to share.
An EA developer calling the Wii U crap damages the relationship between Nintendo and Electronic Arts. It may impact sales, people’s jobs and lives. And for what? Would this guy experience unbearable pain if he wasn’t allowed to share his opinion on-line?
If you had a company, how would you feel if your own employee called your products crap? Or employees of a business partner criticizing you?
An employee gets PAID to do a job, not to voice opinions damaging his employer.
The Wii did great, millions of people enjoy playing games on it. How can the Wii U, an updated and much better version, be “crap”? Then the original Wii much be crap^2, but apparently it’s good enough for many people.
As long as those were their own, personal opinions I would still stand for their right to say them out loud. If they tried to portray their own opinions as the official company word that would be a different matter, but alas, in this case the developer doesn’t do that — he clearly is voicing a personal opinion.
An employee gets paid to do a job, not to guard his opinions that someone, somewhere might not like.
I wonder if you have any working, political, military or sports experience.
Some environments require teamwork directed from above. You can not, as an employee, state public opinions and then claim they are “personal” and not the view of your employer. Nobody will buy in to that.
This EA guy can think the Wii U is crap (which is debatable), can tell his wife, his friends, his parents or some random people in the streets. He can not wear an EA shirt and put an opinion like this on a public blog.
If he gets fired I wonder what you will do after your claim to defend his right of free speech.
Simple: nothing. I am not in a position to do anything about it except voice my own opinion about it.
You are allowed to do that, all day long.
But it changes if you have a job and voice opinions about your employer or business partners. You always represent your employer, not just from 9 to 5.
He can make his opinion known on his own blog. That’s none of the company’s business. It would be different if he wrote on the company blog, website or other official media.
Well, at least in any sane country.
No, he can’t. Just look at the headline: EA Sports developer calls Wii U ‘crap’.
It doesn’t say “Someone on Twitter calls Wii U crap”, because then no one would care. Even though he was just a someone on Twitter saying that it turned out he’s an EA employee and that’s why he made the headlines, he made his employer look bad.
We all know he won’t change his opinion the moment his shift starts. The people at Nintendo won’t say, “Ah, he said it in his spare time, that’s okay, we don’t mind, people will understand, they won’t think EA thinks the Wii U is crap”.
So media are idiots and blow things out of proportions. What else is new?
This is absurd.
He did not reply to an official Nintendo tweet, he did not respond as an official spokes person for EA.
It’s not like he said “EA is crap, I hate our products and our CEO is a retard” (and if it was Finland or any other scandinavian country he probably couldn’t get fired for that either). He voiced his opinion on the product of *another* company that is not part of EA and that EA is not even making products for.
It’s like an employee of Microsoft could not post on his blog that he don’t like VMWare.
I know you refuse to accept this, however, your idealism just doesn’t match with reality.
It doesn’t matter what country you are in. Employers can & do fire employees for the stupid, insensitive, and inappropriate things tweeted or stated elsewhere on social media in ‘their own time’ off the company clock.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/09/stuart-maclennan-uk-polit_…
http://www.news.com.au/technology/young-liberals-caught-up-in-barac…
http://techcrunch.com/2009/06/28/first-time-ever-professional-sport…
http://thenextweb.com/2009/12/10/vodafone-employee-fired-unfunny-tw…
http://www.t3.com/news/apple-employee-fired-for-facebook-rant
You can also believe that it is somehow against the ‘law’ do so, but you would again be wrong.
http://www.cio.com/article/702749/Dutch_Judge_Companies_Can_Lay_Off…
You have freedom of speech in all democratic nations, however, you do not have unlimited rights to say what you want, when you want to, without consequences especially within context on a public forum.
Welcome to adulthood, eh?
Actually, it matters a lot. Company policy does not over-ride local law. Sure, you can still be fired but only if the company think it’s a good idea to get bad press, pay fines and maybe even re-instate you due to unlawful termination.
You do know that there are more than 5 countries in the world, right?
Fortunately for the rest of the world, U.S law does not apply outside of the U.S borders.
I will presume that you simply answered in haste. Otherwise, you are starting come off as having poor reading comprehension skills.
Those were merely examples. Feel free to use the Google yourself to find plenty others.
Did you read that last link? That was a court in the Netherlands – not the United States. In other words, this has next to nothing to do with US laws.
This is fairly standard practice in politics and in business the world over. If you state things that in any way link yourself negatively to your company or political party, you may have the ‘right’ to say them, but generally you must expect a consequence that generally means resignation or being fired.
If you don’t think it can happen in your country or in your corporation, go ahead, make an inappropriate tweet or Facebook comment about your work and see what happens if found out.
Yes, media are idiots, everybody knows this so this EA guy should have known it too. Apparently he’s an even bigger idiot.
He called the Wii U crap. A hardware platform EA needs to run their games on to make money, to feed this guy and others.
Well, lets just agree that it depends on the law what actions the company can legally take. Since this guy is in Canada I’m going to presume that he’s safer than he would have been if he had been in the U.S.
http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/10/adam-orth-fired-microsoft-xbox-ex…
And the moment I leave the office for the day they are no longer paying me. What anyone does on their free time and what their opinions are is not the company’s business. At all.
That’s not saying it’s smart to do what this guy did.
You are right, but if you start posting those opinions or hobbies on-line and people know what you do for a living things could change.
If for example you are an EA sports developer and start publicly dissing the Wii U in your spare time you’ll either lose your job or you’re going to have a serious talk with your boss.
Everyone is free to express an opinion. And there are consequences for those opinions once shared.
So, I can say all gays are pedophiles on national radio and not have consequences then? As a news reporter giving an opinion, it is OK then for me to tweet that Obama is a ‘stupid nigger’ for allowing the IRS scandal?
Of course not!
Free speech has always had limits and consequences.
Fortunately for everyone, most of us don’t live in corporate fascist states and corporations have no legal means of preventing people from exercising their right to free speech.
http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/10/adam-orth-fired-microsoft-xbox-ex…
Enough said!
Well, I did say “most of us”, not “all of us” but maybe I should have said “some of us”.
Edited 2013-05-19 19:27 UTC
The share button is NOT a Facebook button. It shares to what looks like your PSN profile similar to how steam works.
So a guy who writes a type of game I never play and works for a company I rarely ever buy anything from thinks the Wii U is crap.
I respect his opinion. He can avoid the Wii U and I’ll avoid any EA sports title. Works for me.
I’ve seen this phrase written like this in quite a few other places too, but in Britain we say “I couldn’t care less”, meaning “It is not possible to care less about this than I currently do”. Is this an Americanism with a slightly different meaning or just common typo? Only curious …
(Off topic, I know, sorry)
It’s a common grammatical mistake. It and other similar mistakes happen to English speakers all over the world, though it does seem that you see it more from us “Yanks”. I think one reason it’s so bad here is that there are so many colloquialisms, especially in rural areas. I grew up in a very small town; drop one of the natives of that town in downtown New York City and he or she would have a difficult time being understood. Though, the magic of television would make the native New Yorker’s accent less foreign.
I suppose the more one reads, the better their vocabulary becomes. I’m certainly not the best writer, and I speak worse than I write, but I try to stay on top of it and avoid silly errors like that.
Ta very much
It is also a very common grammatical mistake because announcing publicly how one could not possibly care less about an issue, is in itself a cognitively dissonant process.
On top of all the reasons i mentioned previously, they need to fire people who make decisions like “only allow viewing of adult content between xtime and ytime” seriously those decisions make you a laughing stock, so glad that was removed.
We all known the PC will always be superior so meh.