Need For Speed Rivals Canceled for Wii U After Poor Sales of Predecessor

By Justin Sarachik, Christian Post Reporter Monday, October 21, 2013

Need For Speed: Rivals will not be heading to the Wii U after the poor sales of Need For Speed: Most Wanted.

"It didn't really sell that many, in terms of the Wii U market. I would love for it to have, because we put so much effort into that, trust me," Criterion Games' Craig Sullivan told The Sixth Axis. "I'd love for it to be way bigger than it was, and the same for the [PlayStation Vita]."

"It's not the kind of stuff that I like talking about in detail, that much," Sullivan told Escapist Magazine. "We did a load of extra work on the Wii U version, and we had a lot of guys working on that stuff, you know?"

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His comments were referring to the lackluster success of their last game for the Wii U.

"You have to work out where you focus your efforts," said Sullivan. "The 200 people working on this game are only capable of making so much, and doing so many different versions of the game, so we had to go with where we think the biggest audience will be for the game."

Need For Speed's developers, Electronic Arts, said they would only be developing more games for the Wii U if sales improved.

According to Gamespot, EA Games has four games for the Wii U: Mass Effect 3, Need for Speed: Most Wanted, FIFA 13, and Madden NFL 13.

However, EA Gmes could be coming back as Wii U sales have gone up 200 percent in the last month in America and over 600 percent in the U.K.

The sales numbers have gone up due to the $50 price cut to the console on Sept. 20 and also because of the number of beloved first party Nintendo games heading to shelves in the next few months.

While the price cut and number jump is impressive, it still is not a huge number because of how bad the sales were prior to the increase.

"Their sales remain pretty weak, so although the price cut helped, it isn't enough of a turnaround to instill confidence that sales will rebound," Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, told NBC News.

The Wii U sold only 160,000 units worldwide from April 30 to June 30. Its predecessor, the Wii, sold 210,000 units in that same time frame, reported NBC News.