It's fair to say that no Ubisoft game (or any third party title for that matter) will sell more software on a Nintendo console than Nintendo's own first party games.

Really it's business 101. When you invest, you weigh risks against return. In the Wii U's case, they are being or have been surpassed by consoles that have been out a year less than the U. If the trend continues than Sony will continue to grow their lead and MS will find it's footing. I kept reading how 2014 was going to be some magical year coming off 2013 which had an ok group of games. So far we are nearly halfway through the year and what has there been DK (another platformer) and MK8. The next 3 months have 1 exclusive game which is a reskinned spinoff. The rest of the year has nothing finalized yet, that's pathetic. Why should Ubisoft take heat when Nintendo themselves has only MK8 done so far this year, and maybe Smash bros but I doubt we'll get the console version this year.

Finally the Wii U controller just fails to innovate. It's just there, something even Nintendo half asses with, and I fail to see more than a few games which benefit or could have been done without the extra programming and effort it takes. If done properly, it might have been something cool but not even Nintendo has set a precedent for how innovate the controller can be.

Wow, I never expected 300 comments for this thread! Its sort of the same bad news we hear all the time for the Wii U. I guess you guys must have been really eager to post after the site was down for so long!

1 - Then I presume you mean that, unless Ubisoft Montreal makes an exclusive for WiiU, Ubisoft has no right to criticize the system. I disagree. I believe things can (and should) start by baby steps (like it happened with the Wii as Ubisoft launched initially low-budget party, fitness and dance games) and then, only if successful, the publisher should increase the attention to the console, placing more and more resources on it. To create an AAA exclusive is the ultimate stage and very few large companies do such these days without a technological reason or a very strong motive. And the few who do most probably regret it. Last generation I remember Bioshock, Mass Effect, Tekken, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear, among others, going multiplatform. This generation, Insomniac, Platinum Games and Respawn Entertainment must be regreting their choice of making exclusives for XOne and WiiU, as the PS4 is leading the market.

2 - It's not just about building a market on a console. The console itself has to be fertile ground to sell 3rd party software. More than a market built on PS3 and X360, Ubisoft had a friendly environment there, powerful machines (at their time) and a userbase very receptive to AAA titles. The same scenario was drawn to PS4 and XOne, so there was almost no risk on developing for those new platforms (although there was no market yet). The WiiU is different as it hasn't regarded 3rd parties. It was poorly designed for AAA games and wrongly priced for casual titles. Some things just can't be changed now (it's already too late) but others can. Nintendo must focus on the latter and this message from Ubisoft should serve as motivation, once it means they haven't given up on WiiU yet.

There you see how little the experts' opinion may tell about the quality of a game. The critic was proven wrong after Assassin's Creed to sell strongly and its sequels having much better reviews.

It seems the development budget was the same between Assassin's Creed 1 and Zombie U. As for the PR-budget I don't know but Zombie U was presented as a great novelty for the next generation, just like Assassin's Creed.

It seemed to me that you were not getting what he was saying. Now I see where you're coming from. Answering your question: because the console is too expensive for casuals and too weak for hardcore gamers. The market is just not there but for Nintendo games. I completely agree with you. padib's hope may be that, if Ubisoft Montreal put their magic into a title tailored for WiiU, the sales would be great and then 3rd party support could grow viral.

Of course it's possible. It may just not be the easiest way and, thus, it may not be the smartest choice. You're talking about a scenario where there is no choice. Moreover, if that was the case, the WiiU would have a huge user base (therefore being much more appealing than what it is now). In the end, resources are limited and they must be well managed. Ubisoft will only think it's worth to channel further resources to WiiU if they don't see them better used on other platforms.

@ 1st underlined: They didn't engage into that kind of risk with Watch Dogs and the reward is being huge.

@ 2nd underlined: It was the other way around. Nintendo consoles were not designed for 3rd party success or even freedom. The console defines the support rather than the opposite. Regarding Wii, you may be right, but then I can tell the same thing about Wii Fit or even the entire Nintendo (blaming WiiU's lack of success on Wii's greedy short-term gains).

@rest: Then, bad decision from Nintendo and poor choice from you picking Sega as an example. Those are the kind of familiar environments that ruled the first generations of consoles. Things have changed since PlayStation 1 into a mainstream environment capturing almost all of the market. Wii was the exception of the rule and Nintendo should have understood that. Now they're paying the price. I hope they finally learn and release a powerful console dev friendly next time because they're shrinking and Sega has gone long ago.

Only the negative ones

I was just basing it of the poster above me who said he had issues that weren't present on the other platforms.

Ok from what I can see everything you've listed is pretty much argumentative and fanboy bull.  Argumentative means that neither one of us can prove anything for those statements so just drop it.  This is the reason why post chains go on forever, people don't realize that there's no winning an argument that's unprovable.  

1)Argumentative BS

2)Fanboy argumentative BS

5) Argumentative PS4 and XBox One don't share the same code, and you can hardly say they worked together to build the thing.  Maybe development costs for cross platform has been reduced a little, but I doubt it's all that much.  This is probably marketing speel more than anything.  

6) It's still a point in Wii U's favor.  I never said it was game changing by itself, I said that it was a point in Nintendo's box that the Xbox doesn't have.  

7) This one you're just wrong in.  If the Wii U didn't have a unique audience, then why do things like Just Dance and all those casual games sell better on Wii U than on other systems.  Ubisoft and Sega made a killing off of them last gen.  That's why they showed so much support for Nintendo this gen.  They made crazy money off of those cheap ass games.  

8) I never said Nintendo had a lot of third party games, I said that third parties have to make their games unique on the Nintendo platform.  Enough that some people might consider buying a second copy to try out the Wii U version of it.  This also plays into number 7 for that fact.  

User was moderated for this post - Conegamer