Peter Moore, EA’s COO, recently commented on the Wii U speaking to Reuters. Nothing substantial was revealed, but he did state that everything was still going smoothly and that they plan to bring all of their key franchises to the system. It’s good to know that a big company like EA is so committed to Nintendo’s tablet device; hopefully, they’ll inspire other large companies to support it as well.

Two months ago we found out that EA had a job listing up for a new game in the Dead Space franchise. What we didn’t hear about back then was which console the game would appear on. Now, thanks to a job request on Creativeheads.net, we know that the game will be released on the Xbox 360 and PS3 as well as a third console that remains yet to be announced.

Could this unknown console be the Wii U? It’s possible, but it could also be either Sony or Microsoft’s next system. All we can really do at this point is speculate, so we’ll have to wait and see.

Yuji Naka, the creator of Sonic (who has since left Sega to start Prope), expressed his interest in developing something for the Wii U in an interview with Siliconera. Asked if he had a dev kit for the console, he answered:

I don’t have a development kit right now. [Laughs.] Please ask Nintendo to send me one! Or maybe Bandai Namco Games can send me one. I would really like a chance to play with that hardware. Right now there probably aren’t many development kits.

The fact that he doesn’t have a kit yet means that there’s no way Yuji or his team are working on any Wii U projects right now; but from his enthusiastic tone, it seems clear that he is quite excited about the system. Perhaps he’s got an awesome idea for utilizing the touchscreen controller, just waiting to be unleashed? Only time will tell.

Vicarious Visions, best known for their work on the Guitar Hero franchise, have apparently been working on a secret Wii U game codenamed “Project Nova”. We have no idea what this game is, other than the fact that it’s also coming to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

This information comes from the LinkedIn profile of an associate producer at the company. Curiously, all mentions of Project Nova as well as Project Atlantis and Project Phoenix have been removed from the page, but I was able to get a screenshot of them thanks to Google’s cache (shown above). Sounds like we weren’t meant to know about this project – exciting!

Jonathan Blow, creator of the critically acclaimed indie hit Braid, is currently working on a PC game called The Witness. It won’t be coming to any of the current consoles because…

…their specifications are over five years old now, and that’s a lot in computer years. The kind of tricks we’d have to perform to get this game working on those platforms are such a lot of work that to port it over at this point is just not worth it for us.

When asked about what he wanted from the next generation of home consoles, he replied with a simple wish for more RAM (which sounds eerily close to a similar comment we heard from High Voltage Software way back in March). He wishes that generation would start sooner because he was told that the Wii U “has a lot more RAM” compared to the Xbox 360’s and PlayStation 3’s paltry 512 MB.

That doesn’t mean we’ll end up getting The Witness U, though, as Blow is concerned that the Wii U may not fare well against the iPad. Still, hearing that the Wii U is packed with RAM sounds like Nintendo have really been listening to what developers want.

Now then, where’s our earth-shattering list of Wii U-exclusive titles?

The Official Nintendo Magazine had the chance to interview Bethesda’s Pete Hines, who said that the idea of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim coming to the Wii U is “definitely a possibility”.

It’s definitely a possibility for the future. We’ll look at any platform that will support that games we’re trying to make, but that’s the key thing – the console has to support the game as it is designed.

But he was quick to point out that this should not, by any means, be taken as confirmation that you’ll be playing Skyrim at the dinner table on your shiny Wii U next year. Hines commented that porting a Bethesda-sized game over to another console is an awful lot of work, and requires extensive testing in multiple languages to be done right.

The more changes we have to make to a game the less and less palatable it becomes because making a game is an enormous process. Just doing 360, PS3 and PC – I don’t think people understand the amount of work that goes into that. All of the localisation you have to do… all of the testing you have to do… on every platform in every language… It’s a pretty huge undertaking.

So you aren’t just supporting the Wii U; You’re supporting it in English, French, Italian, German and Spanish.

But he finished off with the reassuring line “We’ll see. It’s definitely a possibility.” While we shouldn’t get excited just yet, the only quip we’ve heard from Bethesda before was that they’d develop for it only if it was “powerful enough” – which can only be a good sign.

Ryan Stefanelli, the producer of Darksiders II, was recently interviewed by CVG about the Wii U version of the game. First off, you may consider 01net’s earlier rumour about the Wii U being in “development hell” officially debunked, as the Vigil Games team reportedly got the game running on the Wii U controller faster than I can write a post for this blog.

Our one and only goal once we got the Wii U hardware was to get Darksiders II running on it. We didn’t even have running the game on the touch screen on our ‘to do’ list. but once we got it running, we just fooled around with getting it on the touch screen as a lark. It took all of five minutes and two lines of code, and boom! – there was the entire game running on the controller. Amazing.

So that’s definitely great to hear. Even the most direct Wii U port of an Xbox 360 project could easily be enhanced with the basic ability to let you take the game to bed.

Going further, Stefanelli elaborated on what his team thinks about the controller’s touchscreen. Their way of handling the player’s inventory was apparently inspired by what Grezzo did with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D, which turned the infamous iron boots into a simple touchscreen button.

It allows for quick weapon and equipment swaps. For example, you could have two different equipment sets for Death – one that’s geared towards heavy weapons and big armour, and another that’s designed for mobility and quick strikes. On the Wii U, all it would take to switch from one to the other would be a hot button on the touch screen, and multiple swaps could be made during an intense combat without ever pausing.

Just to have something on the touch screen, we put the inventory and map systems on the controller – and even that small thing makes a big difference. When you collect a new piece of loot, you just look down to see if you want it, and can equip it instantly. I can’t say for sure if that’ll be in the final cut, but it’s really cool that the gameplay experience never has to be broken up by changing out equipment.

It makes me happy to hear these positive comments about the Wii U from a prominent developer, as it means that more will probably follow. Bethesda, I’m looking at you!

The site FedWars had the chance to talk to a THQ developer who had a few comments to share about the Wii U. The anonymity of the interview harkens back somewhat to the Project Café era, but unlike the anonymous “leaks” we had back then, this employee doesn’t make any ridiculous claims – his comments seem quite reasonable, and don’t clash with anything we already know about the Wii U.

One of the things he made very clear was that the Wii U versions of Metro: Last Light and Darksiders 2 would be graphically superior to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 releases. He compared the Wii U version of a multiplatform release to a Blu-ray movie vs. a DVD. But he did warn that “this will only happen as long as a developer or publisher puts in the time and effort instead of doing a straight port.”

Most of the employee’s words had to do with the power of the Wii U console, and they shed some much-needed light on how far beyond the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 it lies. According to him, the Wii U would be capable of full 1080p in “most” of its games, which I’m sure many of you will find relieving.

Expect majority of third party Wii U games from most publishers to have true 1080p, additional content, and smoother framrates than what the PS3/360 versions offer.  If you want the DEFINITIVE version of any game in your library, I would suggest either the PC version or the Wii U version…at least for now.

Let’s just hope that most developers really do sit down and take the time to make the Wii U version of a multiplatform game a “deluxe” experience instead of settling for a lazy, direct port.

Sakurai indirectly responded to the “leaked” Super Smash Bros. Universe information from a couple of days ago with a tweet, making it very clear that he’s still busy wrapping up Kid Icarus: Uprising, and that characters for the next Smash Bros. are far from decided yet.

I’m currently concentrating on one title, Kid Icarus. Until this wraps up, Smash Bros. will not progress. Of course, characters have not been decided at all.

While there isn’t much to learn from that quip, it’s worth noting that Sakurai didn’t denounce the document as fake, so you can feel free to drive the rumour mill over it for a while longer.

Patrick Liu, the lead designer of Battlefield 3, believes that the Wii U will prove sceptics wrong, much like the Wii did. He admitted to having a low opinion of the Wii when it first launched, but was surprised at how that turned out.

Nintendo has surprised us so many times before. I was one of the sceptics when the Wii came out and it proved us wrong. I think they’re going to prove a lot of sceptics wrong again.

He also sees an awful lot of potential in the Wii U’s controller, but isn’t quite sure how to make use of it just yet.

We definitely see potential in the Wii U. But I wish I had the breakthrough idea for how to exploit the new controller.