Epic boss Mike Capps slammed the Nintendo Wii as a “virus” that is moving the industry backward with its supposedly superficial appeal.
In an interview with IGN, Capps said he and his circle of friends found themselves buying the system after being impressed by seeing it in action, only to have it languish after a couple of months.
“It’s a virus where you buy it and you play it with your friends and they’re like, ‘Oh my God that’s so cool, I’m gonna go buy it.’ So you stop playing it after two months, but they buy it and they stop playing it after two months but they’ve showed it to someone else who then go out and buy it and so on. Everyone I know bought one and nobody turns it on…” he said.
Capps praised Nintendo for its ability to turn a profit and reach a wide audience but said the company was not helping move the field forward tech-wise. “As an investor you love ’em, but as a next-gen console technology maker, they don’t run UE3 and they can’t. … we go forward, not back.”
Capps’ company has a vested interest in “next-gen” technology, as the developer of the Unreal Engine, which runs on the PC, 360 and PS3.
His comments also come on the heels of a recent New York Times article titled, “New Wii finds a big (but stingy) audience,” showing that Wii owners, as casual gamers, tend to buy less software for the system because they are not driven by a need to play the newest games.
Source: IGN.com
