14 DAY TRIAL // The Nintendo Wii has been embraced by more than 50 million people across the world, many owning quite a few titles for the fun platform focused on delivering more accessible and casual experiences to its users.
The huge fanbase has made it quite interesting for a lot of publishers, including Electronic Arts. While talking with one of the company's biggest studios, BioWare, which has tackled big RPGs like the recent Mass Effect, IndustryGamers asked Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk about whether they ever thought about bringing one of their titles to the Wii.
While a bit secretive, Muzyka revaeled that “I think the question we'd ask is, 'What is the Wii audience looking for, and what would we want to deliver that has emotionally powerful narrative?' If we did a Wii game I think we'd approach it with the target audience in mind first and the vision of delivering an emotionally powerful narrative and go back to our basics in terms of some of the pillars of gameplay we'd like to bring to bear – exploration, progression, customization, conflict, story, narrative, and characters. In the end the players are all human regardless of platform and they all want to feel something powerful and engaging. As a developer, you just need to really adapt and customize depending on the platform.”
Further pressed by the questions, the developer said that he had nothing to announce just yet, but a few secret projects are underway at the company. “We'd be intrigued by the idea of developing on Wii but we have nothing to announce right now. We do have some unannounced projects that we're not ready to talk about yet, and they are different from some things we've done in the past... Our goal, really long-term, is to broaden our base and continue to differentiate and have diversity of choice on different platforms, because we know there are different audiences on platforms like mobile and Wii, and different geographic markets and distribution and business models. It's exciting, but you can't do all things at one time.”
BioWare already has in development two big titles, Mass Effect 2 and the MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic, which promise to be huge money makers for the studio and for EA, their publisher.