This is from eurogamer; an interview with criterion that shows that 3rd parties were struggling with the gimped dev kits until Nintendo gave them more capable ones:
The Criterion team found itself looking at what seemed to be some decent hardware, but without the means to fully access its potential. Idries Hamadi, technical director, is at pains to point out that this isn't a port in the traditional sense ("it's not like we finished Most Wanted and then we started this on Wii U, we had stuff running this time last year") but explains the general process involved in bringing a game on one platform to another.
"Getting the graphics and GPU to run at an acceptable frame-rate was a real struggle. The hardware was always there, it was always capable. Nintendo gave us a lot of support... that wasn't there at day one... the tools, everything."
"The difference with Wii U was that when we first started out, getting the graphics and GPU to run at an acceptable frame-rate was a real struggle. The hardware was always there, it was always capable. Nintendo gave us a lot of support - support which helps people who are doing cross-platform development actually get the GPU running to the kind of rate we've got it at now. We benefited by not quite being there for launch - we got a lot of that support that wasn't there at day one... the tools, everything."
"Tools and software were the biggest challenges by a long way... the fallout of that has always been the biggest challenge here," Idries reaffirms. "[Wii U] is a good piece of hardware, it punches above its weight. For the power consumption it delivers in terms of raw wattage it's pretty incredible. Getting to that though, actually being able to use the tools from Nintendo to leverage that, was easily the hardest part."
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-need-for-speed-most-wanted-wii-u-behind-the-scenes
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