Will Third Parties Return to Wii U If It Sells or Reaches 12 Million by 2015?

[fleischr]

Mummelmann said:
They can't very well return if they weren't there in the first place. There wasn't all that much wholehearted 3rd party support for the Wii U from the beginning, despite being the follow-up to a market leader and essentially holding the entire 8th gen market to itself for a year. There is no reason to believe that this will change regardless seeing as how it has sold very poorly, the 3rd party efforts that have found their way to the Wii U have sold atrociously and the competition is currently doing a whole lot better on both fronts.
As for a turnaround; I wonder at which point every single person will realize that the Wii U will not have an amazing comeback, I imagine even a year from now, we'll have someone going "It's still too early to call anything."

Sure enough. Especially if NIntendo continues the practice of money-hatting little-known, but promising adult oriented projects that are on the brink as they did with Bayonetta 2. There's rumors of them doing the same with Devil's Third. Though NIntendo partially owns the Fatal Frame IP -- it could be argued they're doing the same there too.

Big family-oriented and casual franchises like Just Dance and Skylanders will definitely stick around. Lego games will probably always be on the console too.

It wouldn't necessarily be crazy for EA to dip their toes into publishing some new sports games sometime in the future. Especially since they've developed one on there before.

So by some measure, the Wii U always "has a shot at 3rd party support" because every publisher sticks their finger in the pie (but so seldom take a slice...)

Realistically, most everyone realizes we won't be seeing GTA, Fallout, or  new Batman on the console and really most Nintendo fans are perfectly fine with that. I for one do enjoy the extra gamepad functionality on WiiU Batman. I look forward to see what they do for it on Watch Dogs. But sadly, we Gamepad afficionados are a niche group. It's a shame Fallout won't make it (because the Pip boy is basically a wearable gamepad) -- though playing it on PC will still be just as nice.