I dunno, I wish I had your optimism, but I feel like there's no hope for this game. Between the delay, ill feelings towards Ubisoft, and the game in general not delivering on the hype, I can't see many Wii U owners going for it. I'd love to be wrong, but I reckon they'll spend their dollars on Smash Bros, Bayo 2, and Hyrule Warriors instead.

I know the numbers are not going to be great, but to be honest I never expected the game to reach high numbers, even if it launched at the same time as the other versions. I really don't understand how the other consoles can launch several games on the same month and all sell decent to good numbers, but when Nintendo consoles are involved only 1 game can be purchased. I understand a bit of it in someplaces like my country where buying a game at full price is difficult for the average Wii U owner, but it looks like the situation is more common than that... why do people have to buy Watch_dogs OR Smash Bros? why not both?

I will give you an example close to home, why do people will have to buy Bayonetta 2 OR Project Zero V in Japan this month? can they buy both?

I think we should wait for reviews before we start complaining about the GamePad features. The GamePad features of Arkham City, Deus Ex and Splinter Cell Blacklist made the Wii U versions the best of the lot so I'm reserving judgement until we hear more.

There is not really a good point of comparison, the companies know that releasing close to christmas season is the best option for games on Nintendo consoles and they have data to support it, and summer is usually the worst time for anything except handhelds... but we will never know how big is the difference. The good thing that Watch_dogs have going for it is that it is a unique title on the console, there is no CoD, AC, or almost anything else, if you want a M rated game you can go Bayonetta 2 or Watch_dogs, and those could not be more different from each other. Sure Smash is going to grab all the attention but if you are a new Wii U owner and can't get GTA V, I think WD is the best/only option.

There's always LEGO CIty Undercover.

Not sure if serious... I know the genre is kind of similar, but the style is too different.

A controversial topic, but an interesting read...

"Do you think the average consumer cares about who caused Wii U's third party problems? I mean, we can debate about whether third parties are at fault, or whether Nintendo is at fault, but do most consumers (in the real world) care about who is at fault?

Here is a quote from Nintendo's George Harrison in 2005 about why GameCube struggled.

“Consumers want consistency. They would never buy a DVD player that had only one or two good movies a year; they want consistency and variety” — Former Nintendo exec George Harrison

This is the only thing that consumers care about. Consumers only care about results -- not how you reached those results.

Nintendo is selling a $300 system, and in the words of Chris Kohler, "It's *Nintendo's* job to convince third parties to get their games onto their hardware and services by making it an attractive proposition". It's Nintendo's job because they have a royalties/licensing business. It's Nintendo's job to keep consumers happy with their Wii U purchase so then they'll buy Nintendo's future products.

It doesn't matter if third parties are too stupid to see good opportunities.
It doesn't matter if third parties are terrible at business.
It doesn't matter if third parties are too lazy to port a game.
It doesn't matter if third parties are greedy, corrupt, selfish, or any other adjective that you want to give them.

The only thing that matters is Nintendo can convince third parties to get on board...because that's their job.

Because if you can't get them on board, Nintendo consoles won't be able to provide consumers with "consistency and variety". People expect consistency and variety when they are paying for a $300 console.

They can't just count on indies to pull the weight. Indie developers can't afford licenses to popular properties like Star Wars, Batman, Marvel, WWE, NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, FIFA, or UFC."

The game got delayed less than a month before it was going to originally release.  Ubisoft already fucked up whatever marketing and hype they had going for it.  They missed the launch window for the Xbox One and PS4.  They missed the holiday season.  I seriously doubt a seven or eight or nine month delay instead of a six month delay would have hurt the game any more than it already had been hurt.

Where do you get that the Wii U is harder to develop for?  All I have been hearing since its launch is how easy it is to develop for and how easy it is to port to from multiple different developers.

As a gamer, I would rather have it late than never too.  I have no problem with people buying the game.  I might buy it myself at some point.  I'm just way behind on playing games I already own, so I have yet to jump to the current gen.  I just know when I do, it will be to the Wii U.

A 7th or 8th month delay would mean releasing in the middle of the summer (and right after E3), that is a 2 part problem, first the sales during those months is the lowest of all year, and second the hype still available would be over as it is replaced by the games announced during E3.

The Wii U is "easy" to develop for if you are focusing on its strenghts which is a more powerful GPU, but it becomes complex or difficult when you are trying to port a CPU heavy game like watch_dogs, creating a port is easy to port but the performance will suck, with constant frame drops and other issues, then you have to optimize the game, and that is when it becomes complex and hard, because you will have to move a lot of processing from the CPU to the GPU and since it is a different architecture than the other consoles, you need a very good technical expertise which is expensive. At the moment of the Wii U delay it was the most inestable version and the one with the most technical problems.

I also prefere late than never, but many people don't see it that way... and they also don't see that trying to sell a console with fewer games is always harder, and that is part of the reason why the Wii U is struggling, you should be able to cover the basics, a soccer or futbol game, a solid shooter, some of the big franchises and if you add the Nintendo games, you have a very attractive console in your hands, if the only thing you have is the latest, is a very hard sale to the average gamer, specially in countries where the people can only afford 1 console each generation.

If Wii U development was stalled when the team was sent off months before release to the other divisions to help speed up their development, and the Wii U version is schedule to release a similar number of months after they resumed development, it's posible that the Wii U version may have actually been ready at the scheduled time.