ZombiU might be the only exception. It was a bundled game and a launch game, that sure helped. Has been discounted after the first year. But except it, what other 3rd party games have proved to sell? I doubt COD or AC even make up for the costs for being ported to WiiU. 

They sold terribly, but they were all funded by Sony themselves, not by a third-party publisher.

People made a mistake. They thought they were buying ZumbaU.

Knack certainly did sell terribly.

I don't really think ZombiU had a small budget, certainly not. Also, what's more relevant to the topic is the best-selling mature multiplat (as huge as AC) has sold only about 160k units. That is definitely terrible.

You guys really need to stop complaining, and buy there games. If you can't/don't want to, you should not expect them to support you.

Ubisoft knows how to make money with Wii U. Low budget, family friendly products. They aren't complaining about how Rayman and Just Dance performed.

Wii U struggles to sell big budget mature stuff. That's the support going away.

You mentioned Shovel Knight. That's kind of product I would expect Nintendo fans to enjoy and it didn't need huge sales to be worthwhile on Wii U. That was a low risk game.

I agree with others that there are certain 3rd party games that can succeed on the Wii U but I don't think we can really specify what kind of game that is. I woulda thought Wonderful 101 would have sold more then 250k by now but nope.

Developers are gonna make games specific to the Wii U, not unless Nintendo is funding them, so it really is a dead system for most games 3rd parties.

Rayman isn't exactly "mature", and I do think it was a success on Wii U, sold pretty well for a multiplat, especially compared to other versions.

Also, that Rayman game has sold over twice as well on Wii U than AC IV: BF did, despite the latter being a far more popular franchise. That certainly says something about Wii U gamers.

But it was only up to Nintendo to release such an underpowered console. A console that can't run multiplats the way they are designed to play. This causes Wii U ports to be worth less in the eyes of gamers and they skip this version - thus the bad sales (I'd never choose a Wii U version of a multiplat over a PS4 version, not only because of graphics, but even such a stupid thing like trophies). If Nintendo decided to go upstream, search for a niche, then they are responsible to make this whole endeavour worthwhile for their partners. Look at Ubi - what kind of a company is it? It's a company that makes AC, FarCry, Tom Clancy's, Watch Dogs, etc. Core games. If their games don't sell on a given platform, should they bend over backwards and at any cost create games that would sell on it? Or should they stick to their guns and continue releasing massive hits on PS and Xbox platforms? It's not their fault that Nintendo shaped the Nintendo gamer the way it did. It's not their fault, that AC doesn't sell on Wii U.

Every company has shaped its gamer and we all know that. Xbox crowd is mainly FPS oriented (MS did it with Halo and CoD deals). PS crowd is more varied in taste, more TPP and jRPG fans here (Sony did it releasing many different games covering different genres and getting the most jRPGs in the past). Wii crowd is people playing cartoony games (Nintendo did this releasing pretty much only casual and cartoony games). If anyone is to fight to try and change its image and its gamer, it's the company itself, not 3rd parties.

Nintendo made two massive mistakes. One - Wii U is too underpowered. Two - they have neglected the mature franchises. And they are too stubborn to realize this. The best selling Zelda games are the mature ones. Still, the next one remains kinda cartoony (though bearable). People are voting with their wallets to get a mature Zelda, yet Nintendo doesn't get the message. If they keep neglecting mature gamers, don't release mature games, 3rd parties won't be giving them any, cause people who were interested in such content leave the platform. The only positive thing I find is the fact that Nintendo did acquire Bayo2 and the Xeno franchise, there is also Devil's Third coming. Maybe, just maybe, they'll manage to convince some of their gamers to get into mature games. We'll see, these are steps in the right direction, but they will need more than just these and it will take years to get Nintendo gamers into more mature content.

You keep talking about Zombi U as an example of success. You are aware, that the reason it sold that much is the combination of being a launch title, getting a great bundle and being exclusive. Even if we leave the first two factors out of it, exclusivity is mandatory to sell at all on Wii U. As AC and CoD have proven, the console is way too underpowered to run PS4One ports on par with these consoles and gamers don't buy them for being inferior/not liking such games. So now you say - make exclusive games! The development is going to be even cheaper! Cool. So a 3rd party dev makes a game for the Wii U with a lower Wii U level of graphics... So why not put it on PS360? They can run Wii U games easily. So what happens? Wii U loses exclusivity! Why? Because putting the game on PS360 guarantees much higher sales than keeping it exclusive on Wii U. Obviously, since the game is no longer exclusive, it sells like crap on Wii U, but should the 3rd party dev care? Not at all! Cause the whole project just made him more money. If anything happens, they will dump the Wii U version next time, since it sells the worst.

This is the vicious circle Wii U is in. And it's not 3rd parties fault. They just try to adapt to the market reality and earn their living. The burden is on Nintendo, just like it was on Sony with Vita. Sony quit Vita (and I'm f***** pissed at them for this, it's such a great console with massive potential), we'll see what Nintendo does with Wii U.

Did they really tried?

ZombieU was the only game with a little effort behind. They don't really tried to use the Wii U hardware effectively for the graphics but at least they used the Gamepad very well. ZombiU sold not as much as they hoped, but with the the low ratings ZombiU received (and it was very buggy before the patches) the sales seems appropriate.

Assassins Creed 3 on Wii U was technically only "ok" and received not much DLC. Assassins Creed 4 on Wii U was technically a mess with no DLC. In places the graphics in AC4 looked worse than in AC3. Rayman had its greatest and best incarnation on Wii U but only because they used the Gamepad well and the graphics where not challenging for the hardware. At least Rayman sold more on Wii U than on the other systems.

Ubi tried not very hard. They tried to make the ports with the lowest effort possible. It's okay that Ubisoft give up on Wii U but at least they should have tried with more effort.

I don't have hopes for Watch Dogs Wii U. First it seemed to be the greatest version of the game with Gamepad support and all but know it will probably only a quickly ported version of the PS360 version.

By the way: Just Dance was the only Ubisoft Wii game that got heavily promoted. I saw Just Dance events in some stores and all used Wii or Wii U. Perhaps some promotion for the Wii U versions of AC could have done something? The Wii U versions of AC got not even mentioned in most ads.

No time for tears. There are so many probably great first party (or Nintendo produced third party) games announced for this and next year (yes "mature" ones too) that I don't have time to test Watch Dogs anyway