True.

Maybe IW were snowed under from making the other 5 versions .That's about the most sensible answer I can come up wirth, as it does seem a strange choice now that the porting process is no longer a round-peg-into-a-square-hole deal.

It's wrong to assume they're shovelware just because they're either low-budget or non-core gaming. Shovelware is where you put out a heap of low-quality games with the hope that ignorant people will buy the games anyway.

Angry Birds is a proven game - it's quality, and if people buy it, it will be out of knowledge, not ignorance, of what the game is like. Spongebob could be either a good or bad game - looking at gamerankings, some Spongebob games have managed over 70% with enough ratings to call it a legitimate ranking. Of the six, Wipeout is most likely to be shovelware, but even that game, you can't assume it just yet.

So-called "hardcore" gamers need to be careful when throwing terms like "shovelware" around.

so then whats a shovelware game, since you seem to know? How much does a game have to sell to be considered shovelware? What is a quality game? who decides?

not a bad answer but im not buying it. How can they be snowed under and they are working on the PS4/1 versions and those are going to be even more different HW wise? AND they had access to Wii U dev kits for HOW long? Shit they could have just made the damn Wii U version along with PS360, it would have been the same damn thing. Something stinks and its coming from Activision. This is gonna sound cynical, but i think this is just them treating the WII U like a step child. I hate calling 3rd parties bias but there it is.

It's not a well-defined concept, but an easy way to identify shovelware is by looking at things like attention to detail, glitchiness, and amount of functionality. Compare the 16.2% on gamerankings game, Family Party: 30 Great Games Obstacle Arcade for Wii U (watch a review of it here) with the 58.39% on gamerankings game, Carnival Games for Wii (review here). Carnival Games had flaws, but there was a lot of attention to detail, only a few glitches (plus a few control flaws), and a variety of functionality. Family Party, on the other hand, was a glitchy, barely-playable mess. Carnival Games was a low-budget title. Family Party was shovelware.

well considering the Just Dance games, especially the early ones, didnt even work. Im gonna put that in shovelware category despite it selling so well.

From what I can see, the main issue with the original was just that the controls weren't tight. Problems with control do not make a game shovelware on their own. Look at the rest of the game, though, and you see that plenty of attention to detail went into it, it wasn't particularly glitchy, and it did what it said it would do (albeit with the control issues). And it appears to have been refined further since then.

The original was probably somewhat shovelware, in that it was probably rushed and put out with the expectation that it would be a flash-in-the-pan bit of sales, enough to make back the low cost of development. But it did better than expected, and was turned into a franchise as a result.

EDIT: Note that, while some review places gave it a low score (IGN gave it 2/10), others were much more generous (Eurogamer gave it 7/10). That's usually a sign of a flawed game, rather than shovelware.

What? Read the DigitalFoundry comparison of BO2 and then tell me with a straight face the WiiU version was on-par with the Xbox360 version.

Like I said in my first post and was repeated again a few posts above, IW are already bogged down with 5 iterations of the game.  The studio only has so many resources to work with.  Adding a 6th SKU to the mix would mean something is going to get limited attention (read: Wii U version).  By handing it off to Treyarch who are familiar with working with Nintendo and are familiar with Nintendo's development tools (IW has never done either) and isn't bogged down with 5 other SKU's to deal with, they can concentrate on the porting process (game and engine...just as they did on Wii).

And again, treyarch porting IW's Modern Warfare 4 engine to the Wii just as they are now porting the next generation iteration of the engine to Wii U.   This really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone as this is exactly what happened last generation.   Keep in mind that Treyarch back in the Wii days could have just reused the same CoD 3 engine on Wii but instead they ported over the next gen engine.  

I'm interested in COD. If they bring it to the e-shop this time, I will buy it.