If you dont tell people to buy your games and are absent 99% of the time offer bad value skip every odd entry in the franchise sometimes even insult the gamers.
Then its pretty clear who is to blame.
People keep negative things in mind way easier than positive things. If you disappoint people several times you dont just need to do 1 GOOD THING to regain trust. You have to keep doing it. Dont try it at all or try it. But dont say you tried when the only thing you did was put meh effort into a single thing and then gave up again. (thats just doing things for your own reputation)
The longer third party is absent the harder it gets for them to make a comeback. Every single Nintendo player is used to not playing third party games on Nintendo consoles. Everyone that also owns a PC knows that you get better value on PC anyways. (I own Sony Microsoft and Nintendo consoles and yet I would never buy a third party game on consoles unless its NOT coming to PC). Third party tought Nintendo players that they cannot count on them so they dont.
Xbox was microsofts first console. Yet it got constant third party support even tho it failed in comparison to PS2. The GC already suffered from the "you cannot count on us" phenomenon. WiiU was a chance for a fresh start but during the first 3 months you already heard "not coming to WiiU" "Developer X dropping support" etc.
Also expecting ZombiU a low budget (launch!)title without alot of marketing to sell up to 1.5-2m ( Why 1.5-2m? because ~1m is "nowhere near profitable!" So they probably expected at least 2m) on a new system that just launched and started with a userbase of 0 that was sold for 70! Bucks not the regular 60! (MassEffect also was sold for 70!)
and at the same time expecting WatchDogs a AAA title with a shitload of marketing and hype to sell ONLY 6+m (none expects 0 profit that means probably even 5m or so would have been enough to make a profit!) on raughly 200m consoles and PCs. is kinda stupid. Especially when porting a game to a new console also costs money. (By the time WD came out WiiU already sold several million units so did PS4 and XBO. There were more than 160m PS360s and Xm PCs)
So we have
low budet single platform WiiU launch title on console with 0 userbase (launch) That was sold for 70!!! bucks.
= ~1.5-2m expected sales
hyped well marketed AAA game (had live action commercial) on PC, PS3, PS4, XBO, 360, WiiU (5x porting costs) with ~ 200m users.
= 6m expected.
MAKES SENSE TO ME....
