Frostbite engine not used for Wii U due to 'not too promising' test results

EA DICE's Frostbite engine is not being used to develop games for Wii U due to "not too promising results" from testing on Nintendo's console, according to a tweet from DICE technical director Johan Andersson.

Andersson tweeted that new Star Wars games made by DICE and Visercal Games, announced yesterday in tandem with Disney and EA's exclusive agreement for EA to handle the franchise, would utilize the Frostbite engine. In response to a reply asking if Andersson meant the Star Wars games won't be on Wii U, Andersson responded that DICE's engine does not run well on the console.

"[Frostbite 3] has never been running on Wii U," he tweeted. "We did some tests with not too promising results with [Frostbite 2] and chose not to go down that path."

In March, Battlefield franchise executive producer Patrick Bach said the Frostbite 3 engine, being used to power upcoming games including Battlefield 4, does not support the Wii U.

"We right now don't have support for the Wii U in the Frostbite engine," he said, adding that DICE does not "want to back down from what we see as our low-spec machines," with "low-spec machines" being current generation consoles.

"And the Wii U is not a part of our focus right now," he added.

Polygon has reached out to EA and Andersson for comment and will update this story with more details as we have them.