Talking to Industry Gamers, Epic Games president, Mike Capps explains that, from the perspective of a middleware provider and developer, the WiiU is falling into an awkward middle-ground while rapidly advancing cell phone technology is providing the real challenge.
"As a middleware provider and as a game developer it sure would be nice if all the different platforms were really similar for us - it would make it easier to work between them with maybe just a few differentiating features we could take advantage of. I'd hate to say that the Wii U is late; in fact, you could almost argue that it's early. They're aiming for a point beyond the current generation - they're just not leapfrogging it. One can certainly envision a future a couple years down the road where we have some significantly leapfrogged generation and then the Wii U again becomes a system that's not easily portable between the other platforms. But honestly, I think the bigger challenge for us is mobile."