Well, in all honesty, I don't disagree with what you have said, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with my point!
My point is as simple as this:
Gameplay code is not scalable, not if you want the same game afterwards.
Games have to run both simulation and rendering, and it seems to me that the WiiU does not have as many resources as the other consoles as far as simulation.
I would argue that they did a good job with NFS on both the Vita and the WiiU. But on both platforms, sacrifices had to be made. (I seem to recall saying "mostly intact"
On Vita the framerate is halved, the multiplayer player count has been halved, and the amount of traffic in single player is reduced. On the WiiU the online player count has been reduced as well. These are the tough decisions that I alluded to making earlier. Are these reduced, watered down versions of the games worth playing? In this case, perhaps there's still enough of the flavor there for it to be worthwhile. But on Vita, is the difficulty level changed because there are fewer random cars on the road to collide with? On WiiU, are the multiplayer modes just as fun with 2 fewer opponents? These are fundamental changes to the game, different than changing the size of a framebuffer, or using higher resolution models from the PC version to render.
Let's flip it around: If there is no problem and the Espresso is awesome - what reason would Criterion have to reduce the player counts at all?
Let me try again with the original point: Say you are working at DICE on Battlefield 4, and you discover that the only way you are going to hit 30fps on WiiU is to reduce the player counts on the 360/PS3 versions by 25% (in this case, 24 player to 18 players, the same percentage player count reduction done on WiiU NFS).
Do you:
1. Lower the player count on all three platforms, so that you only have a single set of maps with reduced area to playtest and balance. Keep in mind players will remember that BF3 had a higher player count and will wonder what happened.
2. Lower the player count only on WiiU, but then you will have additional work to balance the game and make sure the experience is still fun with the reduced player count. Is it worth it given the WiiU installed base?
3. WiiU LOL - kill the WiiU version and devote the resources freed up to making the other versions better
Was it not clear enough from my previous post? It's sheer brute force.
Let's say processing power = clock speed * average work done per clock.
You'll notice that I never disagreed that the Xenon is much less efficient (less work done per clock) compared to the Espresso. But at the same time, it's clocked nearly 3x higher. So basically, in the end, it seems that this is the case:
(3.2Ghz * lower Xenon work per clock) > (1.25Ghz * better Espresso work per clock)
Simple as that.
So, as I pointed out, I haven't a clue as to how many copies of of NFS were sold on the WiiU.
How many of those are likely to buy the DLC? It's not going to be 100%.
Don't forget to take into account Nintendo's cut of the sales as well as any submission fees, also don't forget the opportunity cost of the people needed to shepherd it through QA - the producers making the submission to Nintendo, the QA team needed to make sure that it is stable, all of those people could be working on something else, but you are going to have them do this for a few weeks instead.
Maybe that equation doesn't add up for EA. Maybe they might even turn a small profit in the end but the opportunity cost of those people working on something that could make more money causes the math to swing back in the other direction.
Do you really think it is a grand conspiracy? I think
Alex Ward was on Twitter asking people to buy the WiiU version if they wanted DLC support. Do you think he is lying and that there is no way they would ever bring the DLC over, even if every single WiiU owner picked up a copy of NFS tomorrow?