Bethesda: "The time for convincing publishers to support Wii U has long past"

Bethesda's Pete Hines had some choice words regarding Nintendo's third-party strategy, suggesting that the time for getting better software support for the Wii U may have already passed.

In an interview with Game Trailers' Bonus Round, Bethesda's vice president of PR and marketing underlined the company's commitment to making its games available on every platform - as long as those platforms don't require compromise on the original vision.

As far as Bethesda's games are concerned, that has led to their absence on Nintendo hardware despite their huge popularity. And Hines intimated that the situation is representative of Nintendo's approach to third-party developers as a whole.

"The time for convincing publishers and developers to support Wii U has long past. The box is out," Hine said, while sitting on a panel that also included Borderlands 2 lead writer Anthony Burch.

Hines pointed to Sony and Microsoft's diligent and long-running efforts to communicate with third parties during the hardware design process as a better strategy for most developers.

"It's not that every time we met with them we got all the answers we wanted, but they involved us very early on, and talking to folks like Bethesda and Gearbox, they say 'here's what we're doing, here's what we're planning, here's how we think it's going to work' to hear what we thought - from our tech guys and from an experience standpoint.

"You have to spend an unbelievable amount of time upfront doing that. If you're just going, 'we're going to make a box and this is how it works and you should make games for it.' Well, no. No is my answer. I'm going to focus on other ones that better support what it is we're trying to do."

This adds colour to comments Hines made in an earlier interview, where he stated that the Wii U was, "not on [Bethesda's] radar." Nintendo is now attempting to address the Wii U's less than admirable position by cutting $50 off its price.