Poor sales keeping yet another EA title off Wii U, PS Vita

Criterion creative director Craig Sullivan has confirmed that the upcoming Need for Speed: Rivals, developed by offshoot studio Ghost Games, will not be released on either Nintendo's Wii U or Sony's PlayStation Vita. Speaking with The Sixth Axis, Sullivan cited the platforms' low install base and the extra work required to successfully port the title as reasons for giving the hardware a miss, when the franchise's previous entry, Need for Speed: Most Wanted, appeared on both consoles. "[Most Wanted] didn't really sell that many, in terms of the Wii U market," said Sullivan. "We did a load of extra work on the Wii U version, and we had a lot of guys working on that stuff, you know?" Publisher EA has signified a cooling relationship with Nintendo's Wii U platform in the past, saying as recently as May that it had no titles in development for the console. The fact that EA's next-generation Frostbite 3 engine, on which many of its titles are being developed (including Need for Speed: Rivals), has not been ported to either Wii U or PS Vita is another sign that EA is not particularly invested in delivering titles for those platforms. "[Rivals] is going onto new hardware, and you have to work out where you focus your efforts," said Sullivan. "The 200 people working on this game are only capable of making so much, and doing so many different versions of the game, so we had to go with where we think the biggest audience will be for the game."