Have you read up on Nintendo's history with third party? Nintendo did this to themselves.

I applaud Iwata for not giving in to the money grubbing wars with third parties, but thats mostly because of the manufacturers and not third parties.

AAA is in the minority and a dying breed, their big-hit-titles are all sliding down the slopes after so much milking. They make financially ruinous games, sink millions of dollars into projects from which they expect unrealistic returns, kill off any IPs with only marginal success, and breed a culture of hype and pre-order bullshit.

AA and Indie is the majority of developers and, if anyone bothered to ever look, are usually on good terms with Nintendo and Nintendo does plenty to support their developments and games. The N3DS is in part built to support one of the major platforms for indie game development and mobile development: Unity. The OG3DS cannot support it and, as such, the cost of indie games on the 3DS is considerably higher and harder to achieve.

The stink here isn't about "the majority" its about shiny AAA.

Bolded: Except that that isn't even remotely true, Nintendo were the very last to reach out to Indies and have been worse at giving out development tools and eased distribution models for smaller titles to reach the customer. They have also openly and vocally opposed user generated content since it started becoming a thing in the late 90's and early 2000's. Nintendo are swimming upstream on purpose and their fans are blaming the currents for the lack of progress; it is such an extremely backwards way of thinking and needs to end. I think you will find, if you ever bother to look, that Sony are by far the ones with the best relations with Indie developers, they have even paid for independent developers' exhibitions at TGS, provide free developer kits (Nintendo charges for theirs) and developer tools, as well as promotion and distribtuion, in a massively superior form at that (the distribution part).

PS: I never said that the majority of developers are all about AAA development; I simply stated that "you cannot expect the majority of developers to customize their efforts around a minority that refuses to adapt to market movements", implying that Nintendo are the ones who have done the least to compromise and meet 3rd parties midway and they have insisted on foregoing traditional and widespread solutions (such as formats and online, distribution models etc) and tried to push their own, and often half-baked, solutions instead. Where in that sentence did I state that this is about AAA titles? Nintendo have by far the worst developer relations out of the big three, and that goes for every segment of the industry.

Rayman Origins

Nintendo ran the gaming world when games were on par with what indy titles are putting out today. They like humble people whom realize their dominance. Nintendo is not a humble company. They have an my way or the highway attitude, which is why they lost third party gen after gen. The Sony gained third party from the ignorance Sega and Nintendo displayed towards third party or from how they were run internally. Read up on it.

They don't sell enough to warrant the port

It doesn't matter if they were first or last, they have already reached out to indies (as this discussion is about the present), and what the hell are you talking about with the rest? They have an application process that is stringent but nothing else, and apparently not stringent enough given the crap that people put out on eShop anyway. All companies have an application process, just go to GAF or other dev forums about the dev kits and look at how it works. You can apply for a devkit and get cleared for one. You seem to be talking about Nintendo as circa 2000 when indie or not, you needed to meet all sorts of absurd conditions and earnings weren't even earned without a certain sell-through, not Nintendo as circa 2014. They have been on board with indie development for a while now, we have indie devs who work to put stuff on their platforms, and indie devs who talk about the successes they've found. If this were Nintendo circa 2000, such discussion wouldn't even exist because indies wouldn't be developing for them... because the rules were horrible.

You think Shin'en, Yacht Club, Wayforward, and otherwise, just work one these Nintendo platforms out of a personal self-loathing? The rules now are far, far different from what they used to be. Nintendo has reached out and adjusted to things like indie. The only thing they don't do, is bend over backwards to accomodate AAA. (It honestly seems like you're talking with very dated talking points that are entirely non-applicable nowadays.)

As for your PS, my point is that the majority of developers do not have to customize their efforts. WiiU supports just about every engine and has the power to play any indie game or AA game. The only short coming they've had for a while was that the OG3DS was archaic in terms of engine support and gave indies and other developers trouble, that is being updated with the N3DS. 

You're getting caught up on AAA developers and saying Nintendo has to compromise for the majority... but the majority do not need to be compromised for as they already have everything they need, only AAA-mega studios demand compromises and... make demands to begin with. They want specific hardware with specific specs to fuel their specific games; PPC is not some mysterious architecture for game development and the eShop, while wonky, is a perfectly functional digitial distribution method (its just lacking account features for the end-user). AAA studios simply desire minimal effort for maximum return, they'd be happy if every console were identical because then their development costs drop significantly. Heck, they'd be happier with just one console monopoly.

Nintendo has, probably, some of the best developer relationships in the industry. I think you are confusing developers with publishers. Nintendo has, seemingly, told AAA publishers to fuck right off. You find me a report, a single one, where a developer that has worked with or for Nintendo has said they are terrible. Find me one, then I will link you the most recent PG+ interview on how it was working with Nintendo. 

Again, Nintendo does not care about funding in anyway shape or form multiplatform games, they only care about exclusives. Instead of paying Tecmo to put Dynasty Warriors on Wii U, they paid them to make Hyrule Warriors. Instead of paying Namco for a Tekken 7 port to Wii U (which will bomb on Wii U) they are using that money to pay Namco to create Pokken. Instead of paying third party devs for Destiny/Assassins Creed/GTA whatever, they instead use those funds to make Metroid Prime 4, Starfox U, Zelda U, etc. There is no deep mystery to this.

double post