Your point is so good it will probably be ignored.

There's nothing wrong with a "spin off" so long as it can stand on it's own as a great game. Most spin offs tend to come across as quick cash-ins. I think they also need to carefully consider how they fit into an IPs universe as well.

The examples of Persona, Donkey Kong/Mario etc, had genuine vision of what direction that spin off was going to go in and in the process ended up becoming their own things.

You're the one confused.  The argument isn't about getting spin-off games to sell systems, it's about making spin-off games to increase the sales of that software on that platform.  What about that do you not get?  And you keep saying "two systems."  You need two systems, yes.  You don't need to BUY two systems.  If you were playing multi-plat games to begin with and had the choice to pick between two systems to play it on, you wouldn't need to BUY another system.  You would already have it.

Also, you seem to not have read what I said, because I said that a spin-off isn't supposed to sell as well as the main title.  They reuse assets in spin-offs a lot of the times, or not use their main team.  Spin-offs are not supposed to be as big as the main thing, so it will be cheaper.  Doesn't mean it isn't worth making.  Look at the Call of Duty games on the Wii.  They sold over 1m.  All of the DS CoD spin-offs passed the 100k mark.  They were all profitable, given how cheap it is to make a game like that.  Also, Final Fantasy's spin-off Crystal Chronicles for the Gamecube did pretty well.  Over 1m sales.  Given the userbase, that's a pretty decent attach rate for a spin-off of a series that has mostly been on Sony consoles after 7.  Tactics is also a spin-off Final Fantasy game, and it also did well.  You have a seriously skewed sense of what's "stupid" and what's not.

The main question I'd ask with that, is why would it need to go on Wii U? Why not just put it on the same system as the main games are releasing on?

I get where you are coming from. But the argument seems to be, 3rd parties are messing up by not making exclusive games which make full use of the capabilities of a system and would sell more units on a single system if they did, than they would making a game that can go across all formats.

There's a reason 3rd parties put their resources into multi format games. Back in the "good old days" the budget to make a game on a console was so miniscule in comparison to now, and the hardware architechtures were so alien to each other that multi platform games technically required the resources of making 2 games.

The SNES vs Mega Drive argument for example. The Mega Drive could not physically run Super CastleVania IV. It didn't have the hardware inside it for the Mode 7 sprite rotation etc. So when they wanted to make a CastleVania game for the Mega Drive/Genesis, it actually made sense to release a completely different game better suited to the hardware of that system and take advantage of that large untapped userbase. Something the Wii U does not have right now.

PS3/360/Wii U are all so similar in comparison, that when you add in the much greater costs of developing a game now, it doesn't make sense to limit your audience so much. Same for PS4/XB1.

Wii and DS had a different COD because again, they had a huge untapped userbase and weren't capable of running the PS3/360 version and so needed to be a different game. It wasn't because "yeah we'll sell more if we make a Wii exclusive one". It was they wanted their title on those formats for the userbase, but they were unable to give them the real deal.

Most of you guys are too young to remember this but, back in the 8 and 16bit days, devs would do just what this guy is calling for. A lot of times, games would have different levels, graphics, music and story. Take a look at the SNES and Gensis versions of Aladin. The Genesis was far weaker, but got the superior game. It had a better story, better levels...better everything.

I think that today, money has corrupted things to the point where unless it's indie, it's suspect. The PS1 changed the industry into more of what you see in Hollywood with the PS2 and Xbox cementing it.

2 different publishers had the license on the different formats. The SNES Aladin was done by Capcom, the Mega Drive one was from Virgin Interactive.

See my earlier post, it's nothing to do with money. It's literally that different systems were just so incompatible with each other previously. Though in Aladins case, it was also that the SNES version was done by Capcom, whilst SEGA outsourced the Mega Drive version to Virgin Interactive, who also released that game on PC etc.

We're just at a point now where hardware architechture is so similar from system to system, that there is no need to have to make separate versions of each game. A port is much more commercially viable than a remake.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney%27s_Aladdin_(video_game)

The vast majority of third party devs don't see the point in spending the countless dollars to design their games specifically around Wii-U hardware and features and rightfully so because chances are they won't make a cent back for their efforts. The costs of developing a game for a single platform have gone up drastically in recent years, hence why ports (though generally shoddy) have become so popular. It's naive to expect third parties to lose money just to appease the few people that might actually buy their game. Nintendo promised third parties a rose garden, and instead gave them a dump.

Lol thanks. At least I know someone understood. 

I know what you are talking about. Aladdin and xmen on snes and genesis.

Maybe publishers should make all of their Wii U ports significantly cheaper than the other versions. That would be a good way to boost sales.