Calm those quivering lips, Wii U users, it’s true, it’s really true: For the first time since 1991, Electronic Arts’ Madden series will sidestep a Nintendo console. The company’s newest offering, Madden NFL 25, won’t be available for the Wii U, but hey guys, don’t worry — the two companies totally still have a “strong partnership.”

Over at the Nintendo World Report, EA Sports confirms the decision to withhold the popular franchise from the Wii U in a statement:

“We will not be releasing a Wii U version of Madden NFL in 2013. However, we have a strong partnership with Nintendo and will continue to evaluate opportunities for delivering additional Madden NFL products for Nintendo fans in the future.”

If your Public Relations hype machine alert bell isn’t dinging right now, it should be. As readers on the Nintendo World Report’s post note, “strong partnership” is a weird phrase to use when rejecting the other entity in that partnership.

While there are surely plenty of customers out there ready to chalk this up as yet another EA fail, indicative of its two-year reign as our Worst Company In America, there are likely other, business-y reasons at work here: Despite the fact that it released Madden NFL 2013 on the Wii and Wii U, by now EA might not see the Wii U capable of attracting enough players to buy the game to even make it worth EA’s while, making this a potentially bad sign of things to come in Nintendo’s future.

As The Verge notes, after EA abstained from publishing software for Sega’s chunk of doomed plastic, Dreamcast. If it keeps shutting out the Wii U, we could see the dwindling of days for the once-popular Nintendo console.

Madden Skipping Wii U in 2013 [Nintendo World Report]

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