A couple days ago, Mark Rein of Epic Games (Gears of War, Unreal engine) popped his head from his HD-rendered palace, his foot just inches from his mouth, and made some partially-true-but-still-harsh statements like “[M-rated Wii games have] been huge financial flops” and irrelevant, borderline wrong comments like “Look at EA. Do you see the same Madden game on Wii? Of course not — it’s a dumbed down game.”
Now Mark Rein is back to clarifiy what he really means. For the full statement, hit the jump, but for starters I’ll tell you that Mark now now thinks that “Games like Madden are great, especially since the developer designed a user interface specifically for the Wii” and “Some [hardcore Wii games] have done well”.
Huge change of heart, huh? It’s funny — I’d imagine if someone were to ask Yngwie Malmsteen about making an album with the Jonas Brothers, he’d just say, “They are terrible musicians and their music is sh*t. I wouldn’t even pay them to caddy my vodka bag,” yet Mark Rein apparently doesn’t feel comfortable letting the world know his true feelings about the Wii. I admire the attempt at tact, but c’mon, do “clarifications” like this really fool anybody?
[Via GoNintendo]
The kind of games we make just would not work well on Wii. With our high-end engine, making a game work on Wii would spread our resources too thin and cause us to lose focus. Hardcore games have been hit or miss on Wii. Some have done well, some have not and we would not expect Gears or any of our games to sell well on the system. Games like Madden are great, especially since the developer designed a user interface specifically for Wii, but again, doing something like that would take up resources we are using to make other titles. Again, I never said making games for Wii was a waste. There are some great games for it, but it’s just not for us. -Mark Rein
