I disagree. It's likely that some publisher will do the effort to port it across for their multiplatform games... and then they'll make some sort of exclusive along the way.

But yeah, unless Epic change their minds (the wording suggests that they're open to it, they just haven't decided to support it, yet), Wii U exclusives using UE4 will be very rare, and other Wii U titles using it will be uncommon.

But then, I still have hopes that High Voltage Software will create a new engine for Wii U based on their Quantum engine series, and that it will become the standard for Wii U exclusives. HVS's aesthetic design is very lacking, but technologically, their Quantum3 engine on the Wii was superb. I'd love to see what a more aesthetically-capable studio would be able to do with a Wii U equivalent.

Really WTF is going on with Epic? First they're all "You'll be pleasantly surprised with Wii-U". Now all of a sudden "Yeah last gen tech is a good fit." WTF? I agree, what's going on behind the scenes here?

I think you are right about the first and i know your right about the second.  if epic isn't giving official support than making that port happen is really really expensive.  it is just flat out cheaper to build from scratch with shared assets in a different engine.

I doubt High Voltage are in the position to make and support a world class engine, and I am not sure that any other devs would look to licence it if they did, I mean no one licended their Wii engine as far as I know. 

UE3 is still a good engine, the only issue is that it doesn't have the tools like the quick compile that allows devs to almost instantly see their changes etc that speed up development in UE4. I am pretty sure that Cryteck said that the Cryengine would be comming to the Wii U so that could be a good option for devs that want to license an engine for Wii U games. And any devs with existing engines for current consoles should be able to port across with little effort, which Vigil did for Darksiders 2, and I think Platnum Games probably ported their engine over for P-100. I expect that CAPCOM will port over MT framework as they already have that up and running on the 3DS theo they don't licence out.

Good to hear that it's portable, but I'm not surprised Epic won't be supporting the WiiU. They seem to hate Nintendo, and support Microsoft. I wouldn't expect huge support from them for any console, bar the NextBox, next gen from them anyway.

This is what I think is going on. It's a trade between Epic and MS/Sony that hurts the Wii U.

Epic is apparently still negotiating with MS and Sony about the power of next gen consoles (as evident from this link http://www.videogamer.com/xbox360/gears_of_war_judgement/news/epic_happy_to_wait_for_massive_leap_in_next-gen_console_performance.html ). It's in Epic's interest to have the X720 and PS4 as powerful as possible (I don't remember the exact reason businesswise but I have seen a good argument for it here at VGC).

Now Epic tells Sony and MS that they can sacrifice the Wii U by not putting Unreal Engine 4 on it, at least not for the time being, and in return Sony and MS will listen to Epic's wishes about next gen hardware specs (probably nothing major, but still tweaking of specs which favors Epic).

The difference being the gulf in effects technology. With the Hollywood GPU having more or less the same featureset as the Flipper from GC, the Wii GPU was hampered by more than just the limited numbers which is what made porting so exceptionally difficult. In the Wii U's case, it has a graphics card capable of doing things (not just by the numbers) that RSX and Xenon can't do, and its also likely that Orbis and Durango, being better-specced as they will be, also won't be outside the field of features available on Wii U, so that porting will simply be a matter of straight up-and-down scalability, rather than the total tear-down necessary to move from PS360 to Wii

Which is why I don't understand why Epic aren't supporting it themselves at least officially. I assume there is some technical or I guess business reason why they don't. The fancy new renderer is designed for 1TFLOP+ DX11 class hardware for it's bells and whistles but I am pretty sure they said they have a striped down version (No realtime voxel bassed Global Illumination with a full deffered pipeline I would imagine) for older less capable hardware like phones, I would have thought they would port over to the Wii U even if it was just to have that checkbox for the engine. But for some reason Epic seem to be perfectly happy to push UE3 for Wii U it remains to be seen if it's a technical limitation (I doubt, but without knowing all the details it's hard to tell) or just that Epic just don't consider it worth the time (little or no demand from licensees for Wii U support). 

Either Epic hopes to continue making money off of UE3 games for Wii U, or they're idiots.

Interesting news, Epic must be too busy working with Sony and MS, making them show hardwares that can please Epic's will for the next gen(not only Epic, studios like Crytek and Dice are talking to Sony-MS too). So it explains why Epic isn't worried about taking UE4 to WiiU now,  Epic just gave support to UE3 on WiiU instead.