But Really, Isn’t The Wii U Just Nintendo’s Greatest Trollbait Anyway?

Let’s be honest with each other here, there isn’t a person reading this who didn’t find @FrostbiteEngine‘s tweets from yesterday to be hilarious. If not hilarious then at the very least mildly amusing. Okay at least enough so to elicit a chuckle.

If you’re not sure to what I’m referring then by all means, go have a look.

Basically what happened was they had a few laughs at Nintendo’s Wii U’s expense. The thing is, they are not the first folks, nor will they be the last to poke fun at that abortion of a console, so I don’t actually begrudge them their shots, mean-spirited though it was.

At least it tells me they’re actually gamers.

But you see, Electronic Arts didn’t take so kindly to these jokes and immediately apologised to Nintendo and its fans. This makes sense from a corporate perspective; Electronic Arts wants to maintain good relationships with partners, with an eye on the future, and they certainly don’t need any more bad PR being sent in their direction.

Thing is, I would argue that it’s exactly this reason that makes the publisher entirely impossible to relate to as one with a vested interest in gaming.

Why do I say that? Well it’s the same reason I know that the guys who develop the Frostbite engine actually are gamers: They are doing the sort of thing that gamers will do.

Now I’m not condoning it, nor am I saying that it’s ever okay to use a day the likes of April Fools as your platform for a smear campaign, and of course we’re all well aware of how abhorrently cruel gamers can be sometimes, but here’s the thing: At least we know they’re paying attention.

Or would you rather they do what Xbox does? You know, use every possible opportunity to self-promote.

Nintendo can’t seriously be that incapable of taking a joke; I mean they called it the Wii U for crying out loud. Wii U. Think about that for a moment.

U MAD BRO?!

As far as I’m concerned, the release of the Wii U was either Nintendo just trying to be trolls, or the company completely losing focus. They make toys, not games. That’s all they’ve ever done, really. That’s why although there has been growth in the likes of Mario, Zelda and Pokemon, they’ve always retained the same core experiences. And that’s okay, and Nintendo are perfectly fine to do just this, but then they started talking about core gaming markets and tried things like working with third parties and creating a gaming experience that is more aligned with the other consoles in the market.

Because that’s what they really needed to do right now.

Now, we at eGamer are absolutely the bee’s knees when it comes to Nintendo and we like to think of ourselves as an authority on all things Wii U; I mean sure we don’t really do any Wii U reviews and none of us actually owns the console nor would we be caught dead purchasing it — even when Incredible Connection was letting them go for R1000 each. But that’s besides the point!

At least we can see that what the Frostbite guys just did yesterday was a favour to Nintendo — they got the world talking about the Wii U again.

Which is a hell of a lot more than I can say for Nintendo or any of its affiliated parties.

Perhaps their bodies aren’t as ready as we thought.

Name: Caveshen Rajman
Location: Durban
Position: Former Managing Editor

Caveshen has published 2177 posts. Read all of Caveshen's posts.

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