Watch Dogs would've sold like crap on Wii U even if it was released day and date with the other versions. 

Assassin's Creed and COD: Ghosts were day and date with other versions and they bombed too. 

The audience for these games left Nintendo a long time ago, like long before the Wii U and has been raised on Playstation or XBox brands. They're not going to play these games on Nintendo consoles. 

And as for ports of games that are 6 months late ... how about a console that's 6-7 years late? For people who own a PS3 or 360 (180 million of them) there's nothing impressive about the Wii U from a hardware POV. It's Nintendo just now catching up to PS3/360 style HD hardware with a so-so online infastructure, but it's all a big "so what?" to many gamers. 

Nintendo, they seem to not care about third party developers.

I'm just going to add my two cents, but I haven't read the entire thread so someone may have already posted this thought.

At some point in time all three parties involved in the market cycle (Publishers, Console manufactures and consumers.) have had their hand in making the third party situation what it is. Nintendo holds some responsibility for not loosing up its control on their part of the market sooner. Though I can also fault the other two market players for allowing too much control which led to the AAA market being what it is today.

The third party publisher/developers hold responsibility for not even putting in a "freshmen effort" in a lot of their ports and their games in general, which led to the consumers not wanting to wade through the cesspit of badly made products to find the one gem located at the far end bottom. Also their moves to restrict the market flow by DRM has not help the process in where you could rent before you buy. Misleading E3 showings paying for good reviews, just made looking for a good product a mess.

The consumer hold responsibility for not buying the good products, purchasing the badly made products on other systems, or holding to their responsibility as consumers. For example don't buy products from Ubisoft, EA for a bit after them releasing a turd, even if it is a must have game; whining doesn't get paid attention to as much as people think, it is money that they listen to and if the customers stop buying games then they will have to take notice and ask themselves where they are going wrong. You have to not buy the next few games or buy used because of the way the industry is set up.

The consumer thing is the same across industries the customers today are not interested in not being a savvy customer and want someone else to do their job. The customer's job is to make sure they are ordering the correct thing, mostly applies to other industries, they need to do micro boycotts of items and services that they are fed up with not being the quality they expect and not just say they not buying this again and buy the next product that is even worse. They need to check their received order to make sure it is what they order, because people do make mistakes. Also they need to realize mistakes will be made and it isn't an affront to their person that it wasn't there.

And this is basically what is wrong with the industry in a nut shell and it has just created a horrific downward cycle. Nintendo's lack of wide third party support is just  a symotom.

Customer do infact have something to do with it. Customer allways carry some responsibility no matter what, because in the end if no one is buying there is no market, but right now the customers are buying the garbage that is comming out and they are using the predetory microtransaction so those are going to continue because there is a visible market for such.

I'm not saying that it is Nintendo's customers per say but the customers as a whole. They are willing to buy the lastest thing that has beed excreted out by developers no matter what condition it is. There are market that are willing to support such a behavior so they go where the money is. If customer stopped buying the annulization of different games and insisted on a mostly unbroken product. There will always be bugs in software how prevalent they are depends on how long the game is in an actual tuning and optimization mode after the game code itself is "finished". The investors will give way if consumers stop buying into badly made product that is rushed out. They will rethink monitization practices if people are not using certin ones, because it takes time and money to code them.

I just wrote a mid sized length post on this a few comments up. But in anything all parties share some sort of responsiblity in a normal market setting. (So this doesn't apply to companies that are trying to con people out of money)

People play nintendo because of quality, not nostalgia.

Can you explain to me how thrid part games failing on nintendo platforms is nintendo's fault? Last I checked the company responsible for the game is the third party and if they don't advertize it and it flops its suddenly nintendo's fault? You guys sure are funny.

watch dogs would have easily sold 500k+ if released on time and without the BS.

AC and Cod didn't bomb. Nintendo always has audience for good games.

I though no one else still believed wii u was on the same level of ps360.

the reason these games floped were because consumers could get them on other consoles (at the time the PS3 and 360) and the WiiU version had no advantages.

the reality is, third parties showed some support for the WiiU at the start. but nintendos failure to attract consumers or give consumers a reason to play on their console was the reason its nintendos fault. now, is the sole reason why third party games on the wiiu failed on nintendo? no, third parties have blame as well. but not nearly as much as nintendo. because its nintendos responsibility to create an audince on their console. and that audince was clearly not there for third parties to sell too. 

Nintendo has had a bad history with third parties since there was a real competitor (Playstation). At that point, its Draconian contracts and its reliance on older technology became too much.

If you look at the top-selling games for each system, its been 80% Nintendo, 20% third-party for Nintendo consoles since the Gamecube generation (if not before). It was the inverse for the competing systems.

Most recently, this has been exacerbated by increasing hardware differences, making ports more difficult and less profitable (than compared to systems with similar architecture). The use of Nintendo products as a secondary console lessened the market for third-party multiplats. Finally, the demographic of those who have only a Nintendo console usually is not interested in the M-rated multiplats.

In a few cases, the publisher bears almost all blame as it almost tried to fail (e.g., EA). But other times the fault is mixed with some good games and some problem ones (e.g., Ubisoft, WBI), And some have just had to make business decisions (e.g., Activision).

Personally, I just enjoy the games and hope for more good ones.

Here's an interesting question though ...

What would happen if you gave Nintendo the PS4 chipset and you forced Sony to make the Wii U their chipset.

Odds are (grudingly or not), Nintendo would get most of the third party games that Sony currently has.

With such a high powered console and relative ease of porting from PC/XBox One, developers simply could not afford to ignore it.

Whereas Sony, as much as third parties "like" Sony ... eventually support for a Wii U like Sony console would fizzle out after a couple of years as developers transitioned more over to the next-gen hardware.

It's business. Not personal. Nintendo makes weird business and design decisions that don't suit third parties. Given the choice of two other options that are far more predictable, third parties will chose that route.