EA’s Frostbite April Fools’ Joke Jabs at Nintendo, Flops Horribly – Update

Frostbite “optimized for Mario and Zelda” strikes an eNerve.

Update: In case there’s any confusion about an apology being issued, EA COO Peter Moore did issue one on Twitter. “Our apologies to partners @NintendoAmerica & fans: @Frostbite’s poor attempt at April Fools was not condoned by EA; unacceptable & stupid”

There are plenty of good examples
of April Fools’ jokes to be found online today (Razer is my favorite so far), but that doesn’t mean a stinker or two won’t pop up.

Case in point: EA’s Frostbite team threw out some tweets earlier, saying that Frostbite 3 is now running on Nintendo’s Wii U console. The aftermath didn’t go so well for them.

Last week, EA formally announced that the next Battlefield game would not be coming to the Wii U, nor would any other Frostbite-powered EA title. One of the larger third party developers leaving Nintendo out in the cold is one thing, but cracking jokes about it only a few days later? Poor timing, and poor taste.

The tweets, all posted today, and since deleted by @FrostbiteEngine, were as follows:

Personally I like the netcode tweet, if only because the “netcode” in BF4 and BF3 isn’t exactly the best. But there’s plenty of fire and brimstone coming down on the tweets; EA COO Peter Moore called the joke “unacceptable & stupid,” to give you an idea of what the EA top brass thinks.

But others at EA hit closer to the funny bone with their jokes, like the Origin Boxed video that went up this morning.

Frostbite “sort of” apologized some hours later. By sort of, I mean they cracked another joke, albeit at their own expense.

You know what’s funnier (meaning not funny at all) than Frostbite’s EA jokes? The calamity that is playing Battlefield 4 on consoles right now, since the title still hasn’t been completely fixed yet.