Consumers need some semblance on trust in the games. We have been given sub par so many times, its hard for me to actually have faith in third parties. Go to any thread about a third party game on Wii U (you might have to go back to launch window) and you will see people saying that they will wait and see or they are just going to buy a different version because they don't have trust in the product.

When you all boil it down, its still a really complicated scenario with no clear blame and no clear way out. Yes, gamers are at fault in some ways, but so are the third parties and so is Nintendo...

I could almost hug you. That is precisely it. Its also not an opinion folks, this is fact. Complete marketing science here.

The Wii U was a bit of a lost cause from the start, to be honest. A few publishers gave it a go but I don't think any of them had any confidence in the console, especially not once development switched over to the PS4/XO.

This is what Anthony Burch from Gearbox said: ""It's probably not too controversial to say the Wii U is not where the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 will be, and that's a lot of development time you're going to split between a bunch of very different platforms if you're trying to release on all of them simultaneously," he said. "That's really where it comes down to, how similar it is to what you're doing on the other [consoles]. And we've got to strip all of this other stuff out to make it work and we've got to completely redo the controls. It's just not going to happen."" http://www.polygon.com/2013/9/3/4689208/time-for-convincing-third-parties-to-support-wii-u-long-past-says

That was from the start of this generation. I think it's pretty much come to pass. A good example is Splinter Cell: Blacklist, which was a good port, except that they ran out of time and had to ship without offline co-op. That means the Wii U port was the last on the list (and rightfully so, to be honest).

From a practical standpoint, a Wii U release is usually going to take the most time/effort/money while offering the least reward. It's going to be the first version to get axed or the first version to be scaled back due to resource constraints. That's logic.

Not supporting the Wii U is not necessarily the same as not supporting Nintendo. That's something we need to keep in mind.

Isn't a 'gimped' version better than no version at all? 

Not that anyone deserves any blame, but the only entities that can put 3rd party games on the WiiU are 3rd parties themselves. No one else makes that decision for them. If all they can come up with is rehashes that don't appeal to the userbase then they will get what they deserve: Dreadful sales.

If second tier 3rd parties were smart they would try to diffirenciate on the WiiU, but that would require that businesses made rational decisions, which we all know they don't.

I personally do not care. Indies and Nintendo are doing a great job of providing enough content on the Wii U to keep me with an annoyingly huge backlog. People who want more should by another console or become multiplatform users.

3rd parties are not entitled to make games for anyone. They weren't entitled to support the Sega Master System or Turbo Grafx 16 or 3DO or Atari Jaguar or Sega Saturn or Sega Dreamcast or Sony Vita or Wii U.

The truth is Nintendo lost the "Nintendo gamer" who would buy a more balanced staple of games, including sports games, third party titles etc. Those were popular on the NES and SNES, but they alienated this audience with the N64 and never won it back with the GameCube. 

As a result what was left for Nintendo was a more narrow hardcore Nintendo fan that preferred Nintendo franchises heavily. 

Gone were the people who loved Megaman and Contra and Ninja Turtles and Street Fighter II and Final Fantasy as much as or even more than Nintendo's own IP. They left to Playstation or XBox. 

The Wii really didn't rectify this issue either, even for all the early success it had, it was mostly from fickle casual gamers who just wanted things like Guitar Hero or Carnival Games, it didn't help the studio wanting to make other styles of games. 

Nintendo's policies made them lose a large chunk of their audience to Sony and MS. 

i blame vince mcmahon

Combination of a Nintendo that somehow doenst seem to care (story behind NfS MW or the Crysis 3 port that didnt happen), somehow lazy, not really interested publishers (Arkham City came about a year later, Mass Effect 3 was a bad joke etc.) and a core fanbase, that seems uninterested in everything not Nintendo.

So actually there's somehow everyone to blame at least to a degree.

It's a far cry from fact.  Businesses are not servants.  Supply is as an important side of the equation as demand.  They have every right to do with their product what they want.  They can tell you to take a hike if they wish, just as a consumer can choose to buy elsewhere.  I've told more than one person that they are not welcome in my establishment.  What you're looking for as a business is an equitable and respectful transaction between two parties with regards to the exchange of goods or services.  There is no implied servitude in that.

Third party developers and publishers have zero obligation to support the Wii U.