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When executives apologize for April Fools potshots

EA Chief Operating Officer Peter Moore has tweeted a necessarily brief apology to Nintendo of America and its fans, distancing all parties from an unapproved, "unacceptable" and "stupid" joke that made the rounds earlier today.

The handlers of an official Twitter account for Frostbite, the engine which powers many EA games like Battlefield 4, targeted Nintendo's Wii U console with now-deleted messages like, "our renderer is now optimized for Mario and Zelda" and "we have finally fixed and optimized our 'netcode'." The punchline, of course, is that Frostbite's current incarnation is not supported on Wii U, which is a step behind the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in terms of power.

April Fools' Day is treated with contempt by many tech and gaming news outlets, and perhaps it's because the jovial nature of a pie in the face has been lost to the contemporary reality: console war jabs made from a Twitter account dedicated to a graphics engine. These comments are no more caustic than you might see on console forums, but those don't usually draw apologies from a COO. These are just awkward.