With Bethesda’s upcoming AAA game lineup, including The Elder Scrolls Online (opens in new tab), Wolfenstein: The New Order (opens in new tab), and The Evil Within (opens in new tab), all skipping out on Wii U platform launches, one might wonder where all of the third party support for Nintendo’s console is going. Bethesda’s VP of PR and marketing Pete Hines told Joystiq (opens in new tab), “None of the games we’ve announced are being developed for the Wii U, so it’s guaranteed that none of those games are coming to Wii U.” He also added, “Will any future ones come out? I can’t say for sure; in our near-term focus, it’s not on our radar.”
Hines said, “It’s largely a hardware thing” and that Bethesda is making the games it wants to make, on the systems that will support their games. This isn’t the end of the Wii U’s troubles. Other companies are limiting their releases on the Wii U platform because of the system’s poor performance at retail. For instance, EA has passed on bringing this year’s FIFA and Madden to the console, and Ubisoft needed to delay the Rayman Legends release because the Wii U’s installed user base alone isn’t sufficient and the game has been expanded to other platforms. As it pertains to Bethesda and Nintendo’s console, Hines said, “It remains to be seen what the future holds.”