April Fools’ is all good and fun, but how do you know you are going too far? The folks at Frostbite and DICE had a pretty good joke on their official Twitter page claiming that the Wii U was now capable of supporting the Frostbite 3 engine.
However, the ghost of April Fools reared his evil head and these posts sadly proved to be untrue, leaving thousands of Nintendo fans angry and disappointed. EA COO Peter Moore has come out to apologize to Nintendo and its fans for the confusion, calling the April Fools joke as “unacceptable” and “stupid.”
Our apologies to partners @NintendoAmerica & fan @FrostbiteEngine ’s poor attempt at April Fools not condoned by EA : unacceptable/ stupid
— Peter Moore (@petermooreEA) April 1, 2014
Frostbite’s Twitter posts have since been removed, but the lingering stink of the joke is still rubbing a lot of people the wrong way. Much of the anger has been pointed at a crack the Twitter posts made about the Wii U being a last-gen console, and not so much about the engine’s availability. Priorities, people!
EA and Nintendo fans have been experiencing friction as of late with EA opting out on many titles from Nintendo’s console, so the bad blood shouldn’t be unexpected.
Personally, I thought the joke was hilarious. I totally fell for it, only because I am one of the most gullible people on the face of the Earth, but anyone seriously offended should kindly learn to keep their nerd rage in check. True, this is a huge business, but this is the one day of the year where these practical jokes are supposed to be shrugged off.
At the same time, I don’t really fault Peter Moore for apologizing. EA is trying to clean up its image with gamers, and jokes like this would have been brushed off as simple fun from a company that gamers didn’t blindly hate and blame all the world’s problems on. For the sake of damage control, he really had no choice.
So no, the Frostbite 3 Engine is not bound for the Wii U any time soon, and the Nintendo faithful are just as sensitive as ever. No new news to report here.
Source: Technobuffalo