From the sound of things, it seems that Nintendo themselves are very reluctant to even release the game, let along promote it. I wouldn’t be surprised if they decided to let it go out with little promotion to dump it in bargain bins. Activision did the same with Singularity in 2010, and arguably Nintendo did the same with Conker’s Bad Fur Day in 2001.
The reason why the game is getting little promotion and why Nintendo are reluctant to release it (they were planning not to, but retracted after backlash from the press and fans) can be speculated on. Here’s my possible theories...
1) Its in competition with one of Nintendo’s important first party franchises, notably Splatoon (both are third person shooters). Nintendo are notable for not releasing games that could compete with current releases. There’s evidence the lack of Mario Kart and Zelda games on the Wii-U Virtual Console is because Nintendo didn’t want them to compete with Mario Kart 8 and the Zelda Wind Waker port.
2) Its not a family-friendly game, and mature games have never really taken off on Nintendo consoles. Companies are reluctant to publish mature games on Nintendo due to their family-friendly stance during and since the Mortal Kombat/ESRB scandal of the mid 1990s.
3) Nintendo are trying to wind down support for the Wii-U in order to really push the NX when its released next year. The lack of games for Wii-U and leaked comments about the NX make almost everyone 95% certain its a replacement for the Wii-U. In addition Nintendo did the same when the Wii was about to be replaced by the Wii-U.
4) Nintendo have Star Fox Zero and Mario Maker upcoming, and want all the media to focus on those rather than any second or third party Wii-U games. Even if Devil’s Third honestly is looking the better game (Mario Maker is just a level editor, and Star Fox Zero looks like a £19.99 PS2 game).
5) Devil’s Third isn’t all that good a game as far as Nintendo can see, and they don’t want their name to be soured by it. This is probably the least likely reason though, as they’ve released disasters in the past which still didn’t sour their name.
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