I'm still trying to figure out just what the future holds for the Wii U, if it will rise again or if it's done before it even got started.  I just looked through the top 75 ww software sales & only saw four first party Wii U games (Mario 2D/3D/Luigi/Party) & zero 3rd party Wii U games.  I thought this holiday was supposed to be stronger then last Holiday because of a better active install base (launch consoles aren't wrapped & sitting under trees this year), but sales of Wii U software seems to be significantly less then it was last holiday where sales were pretty bad to begin with.  Are 90% of Wii U owners waiting for new 1st party games to release next year and just not buying anything at all this holiday?

COD Ghosts sales on Xbone/PS4 clearly shows third parties where they can hope to achieve better return on investment then working with the Wii U who's best selling 3rd party game has already been out sold by third party Xbone/PS4 games on less of an install base & in much less time.  Will any third parties stick around with their mainline games or will they just experiment with what people call shovelware hoping to create the next Just Dance?

Would a console with 6 to 9 Nintendo made games a year and no significant third party presence be enough of a mainstream draw, & be diverse enough, to achieve Gamecube type numbers or possibly more?

Why ask a question you already  know the answer to?

I asked several questions actually.

Good questions. I have been asking myself the same thing.

The Wii U got decent games this year and most have sold very bad even considering the low HW sales. I have no clue to be honest. My only theory is that most Wii U owners purchased the console for an specific Nintendo game or two.

Regarding 3rd party games for the future like I said in another thread I think only a few companies will support the Wii U in 2014. Capcom, Sega, Ubisoft, maybe activision and a few smaller ones with shovelware.

COD is a poor example. The PS4 ONE are the natural progression for the user base. Not to mention Wii U never got the special edition or the limited one with the camera. Someone like myslef with multiple consoles who collects the COD limited versions will always go for where I can get them even if I would prefer to play on the gamepad against a mate in house.

Some of the exclusive I agree should have sold much better.

The issue here is last gen no developer expected Nintendo to win, so they invested all their money into the HD twins to build tool for them. Once that investment happened they stuck with it. Since the hardware wasn't good enough do a port it missed out as a full build takes more money. Effectively 3rd parties further alienated themselves from Nintendo console owners.

Then Wii U launched with games missing content etc.. and people said fuck this not buying any 3rd party, which in turn penalised the other guys who did try and made decent games.

3rd parties need to keep trying to build up a new userbase to gain ong term rewards or stop making games on Wii U if they care about short term gains.

Next gen Nintendo and 3rd parties need to work out their difference, and not that BS EA pulled with unprecedented support. Or they need to adopt and expand more studios and potentially have more collaborative efforts that they fund. New IPs also wouldn't hurt.

Anecdotally: I went to a store here in town. They sold Wii, WiiU and 3DS primarily (its a toystore). They had no 3rd party games on sale for WiiU, except Skylanders Swap Force, Disney Infinity, Sonic Lost World, and Rayman Legends. That was all they had.

However, they had tons of 1st party software.

thats is excatly the issue and third parties made the right choice, 360/ps3 = 160 million users, that eat up third party games, wii= 100 million users that mostly want motion controlled party games, and the were a generation apart when it came to power, so third part's didn't have a choice.

I hate it when people bring up COD in this kind of argument. Do we not remember how fucking long it took for Ghosts to be announced on the Wii U? They didn't even bother adding the tiny Wii U logo at the end of any trailers. That alone makes any comparison totally unfair...

it doesn't really matter, COD is the biggest franshise in gaming last gen on 360/ps3, with the wii being to weak to hanldle a proper port it never got the games ported, except for one different version, the fanbase and online communty  are established on 360/ps3, it's gonna be impossible for those gamers to leave those and go to the wiiu when they can go buy a ps4 or xbbone brand loyality is still huge these days.

The system's certainly in even deeper trouble than I anticipated.