To be honest, I think Nintendo basically made the Wii U just powerful enough so that it could get Call of Duty and a handful of other third party IP for a couple of years, because I think they figured they would repeat some measure of the Wii's success and just wanted to get a little bit more of that third party pie.
I mean when you look at 20 million HD copies of Call of Duty sold, that's $10 a pop for MS or Sony, that's $200 million in licensing fee revenue for basically doing nothing every time a new CoD comes out and I think Nintendo thought if they could get an HD version of CoD that they'd get in on some of that action too.
Iwata has said it themselves, they don't want "overwhelming third party" support, though.
Unfortunately they've been abandoned by casuals, which basically has screwed them, because now they're stuck with an underpowered console that only hardcore Nintendo fans want, and one that's expensive to manufacture because of a giant-sized controller to boot.
The way the Wii U was "supposed to go" was that Nintendo Land would take off and be a nice sized hit for them and NSMBU would be big too and would carry the system for a few months and they'd get some more hardcore players by having Call of Duty and Batman and Assassin's Creed by providing a nice blend of family friendly Nintendo fare + a few of the hardcore IPs that people want.
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