At first, it looked like that the Wii U was going to shape up to be toe to toe with the other offerings by Sony and Microsoft.  However, with the announcement of 8GB of RAM in the PS4, and the 360 set to match, I am not sure and have doubts.  Also there is word about companies being iffy on this.  This being said, what is the case for the Wii U being able to stand toe to toe with the PS4 and Microsoft's offering for multiiplatform titles?  I see the lack of RAM as a major hurting issue, combined with a lack of a harddrive.

Can someone lay out why the Wii U won't be in the same boat as the Wii did with third-party?

It'll all come down to sales.

If Nintendo manages to turn around the WiiU's sales, either with their current stuff that's coming out soon (Monster Hunter, Zelda, Pikmin etc) or with their Chritsmas releases (Wii Fit U + E3 announcements), and/or if Sony and MS screw up (or delay ) their launches due to price, launch window games, or pissing people off enough with drm etc that they actually go along with a boycott.

Then yes, Nintendo will get the vast majority of multipalts, and they will often be timed exclusive to the WiiU, or will simply look pretty similar on all machines, in much the same way that devs worked on the 360 and ported to PS3.

If Nintendo can't turn their hardware sales around, then who knows. From what I can tell, the WiiU is closer in power to the PS4 than Wii was to the PS3, so it will be less of a problem for devs, but if WiiU doesn't get the userbase the Wii did then they might not bother anyway.

Having 4x less RAM to work with is a big issue in what can or can't come over.  If the WiiU does sell, you are far more likely to see games produced be limited in scope than they would be with the amount of RAM the PS4 has (and likely next Microsoft console will also).

It simply won't as it won't be able to handle them. The Wii U is not designed for UE4:
http://www.videogamer.com/news/unreal_engine_4_games_could_be_ported_to_wii_u_epic.html

And apparently the hardware isn't in the same league as the PS4:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/df-hardware-wii-u-graphics-power-finally-revealed

If games are cross-generational, expect the Wii U to get the 7th gen editions, not the 8th gen versions. The best the Wii U will get are the simple PSN/XBL games, but certainly not games designed for the PS4/nextbox (assuming the nextbox is similar in terms of power).

Because sales did WONDERS for the Wii.

The fact is NIntendo lost 3rd party support long ago. It doesn't matter what they put out it will still not get the titles that have any meaning.

This is actually a great question to bring up. It's a bit disturbing that nintendo allowed themselves to be boxed in as they currently are. It's only 3 months post launch and their strategy doesn't seem to mesh with the realities of having to compete with PS4/Kinextbox.

The wii at least had 3.5 years of third party shovelware and more importantly the introduction of motion controls, which propelled the console for a short time. The wiiu situation is like code red at this point. Nintendo knows sales are bad, but they seem powerless to do anything about it. Software drought, no excitement among the masses, lack of exposure. I don't know the last time I even saw a wiiu commercial. The general mentality is that new hardware is being released within 8 months, so nobody is willing to buy a wiiu.

Doesn't look good.

The problem there is, analysts were predicting doom for the Wii all the way to 2008, even some of the more 'reasonable' ones which didn't involve negative sales still predicted sales dropping to 0 within 12 months.

As the CEO of a company with no knowledge of, or real interest in gaming, where are you going to invest in your major franchises?

Despite the WiiU doing worse than the Wii, 'expert' opinion is more favourable to the WiiU, simply because it is the successor to the Wii, not the successor to the gamecube.

Given that the OP is asking if the Ram and Rom difference will decrease the chances of WiiU getting multiplat 8th gen games.. The answer is NO it won't hurt. Most of the Ram in WiiU, PS4, and 720 is not used by the games them selves but by the OS.. In the case of PS4 a portion of the ram is used for recording features and the like. Just look at PC. Does a system with 8 gb perform better than one with 2 gb? Yes. Can both systems play the same games? Yes. So multiplat isn't a Ram issue.

Far as HDD, we all know the WiiU as the best solution of using customizable non-proprietary storage. Which isn't a factor in multiplat porting in any case.

One word: scalability.

I think that had they released a real next gen console with 4-6 GBs or RAM, a decent CPU and GPU (even both slightly less powerful than PS4), they would have got regular 3rd party support like PS4/X720 are about to get. Releasing a console with such low specs means that they aren't even trying to get 3rd parties back and it's actually Nintendo that's ignoring 3rd parties and their needs, not the other way round.

I think the Wii U at this level is a joke on Nintendo's part. Considering the ridiculous cash they made on Wii and 3DS I expected more. And even after the release of the Wii U I believed it was more powerful than what people were saying. I'm disappointed, but I'll still pick it up for around 150 just to play those few 1st party games. I guess that was Nintendo's strategy from the get-go. That's why they want to lose as little money on each Wii U sold as possible. They are repeating the GCN strategy, as I've thought for a year already.