'Wii is a Virus,' says Epic Games President

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'Wii is a Virus,' says Epic Games President
Epic President Mike Capps had some interesting words for the Wii, saying that it spreads like a virus, but then "nobody turns it on."
Posted by James Brightman on Monday, April 21, 2008

In a recent interview with IGN, Epic Games President Michael Capps shared his viewpoint on Nintendo's Wii console. He acknowledges Nintendo's fabulous success, but he also expresses great disappointment in the Wii.

"...first of all, great credit to them. The first time I played a videogame with my parents – aging myself a bit – was on Atari 2600. The next time I played a videogame with my parents, 25 years later or whatever, was Wii Tennis. So it's about bringing people together, families, Thanksgiving, all that. I think it's kind of like a weird virus because I have not yet found a reason to play with my Wii since then," he said.

He continued, "...Zelda I really didn't enjoy on it. They back-fitted the control scheme on it, it was better on the GameCube. Mario, I wish there had been a button instead of wiggle and all that kind of ****. So I haven't played anything that I really wished hadn't been on another platform sadly enough. 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. Obviously there's a class of people who really love it and enjoy it and are getting into the games but I'm still waiting for that one game that makes me play it. Who knows, maybe Wii Fit will be it."

Turning to thoughts of his own company's ubiquitous Unreal technology Capps added, "They know what they're doing and they make money better than anyone else does. 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. It makes more sense for us to invest in the next-generation tech. There have been shops that have done it. Red Steel was a launch title and that was on Unreal Engine. So it's been done. How you take an engine that's all based on shaders and materials and run it on hardware that doesn't support shaders is just impossible. It's about as easy as PSP for us. Maybe it would make sense, but it makes more sense to invest going forward."

In other parts of the interview Capps touches on Gears of War 2 and also how the impending blockbuster release of GTA IV helps the industry and therefore is good for Epic too.