EA apologizes for April Fools' prank gone bad
Electronic Arts apologizes for a tweet that jokingly claimed its game engine, Frostbite, was headed to Nintendo's Wii U.
The official Twitter account for the Frostbite game engine, the EA-owned technology that runs Battlefield 4 and is designed for use with PlayStation and Xbox consoles, posted a tweet on Tuesday, saying that the game engine "now runs on the Wii U since it is the most powerful Gen4 platform." The tweet went on to say that the game engine "is now optimized for Mario and Zelda."
The folks behind the Frostbite Twitter account weren't quite done there. In subsequent prank tweets, they said that "Frostbite will power [video game] Half Life 3," and said that the title would be a Wii U exclusive.
Although those who closely follow the games industry knew that the tweets were an April Fools' Day prank, they weren't well-received among Nintendo gamers and perhaps even Nintendo itself. The Wii and Wii U are the only major game consoles available now that the Frostbite engine doesn't support. EA has all but abandoned the Wii U because of that.
Moore quickly apologized to both Nintendo and its fans for the tweets and said that they were a "poor attempt at April Fools not condoned by EA: unacceptable/stupid."
The offending tweets have been taken down from the Frostbite Twitter account.
CNET has contacted EA and Nintendo for comment on the tweets. We will update this story when we have more information.
EA shares are down 1 percent to $29.19 on Wednesday.