Because 3rd parties need to make money to survive and they're not going to make much money on the WiiU.

Well nordic games ported arcania the complete tale to ps4 (released last month) and sold for 30€ on release and pretty sure sold even way worse then watch dogs (its a 2011 games, rereleased to ps4, no advertisment or anything) but nobody complained.

The game got 4 ratings on amazon (watch dogs wiiu 46) so even if its pretty inaccurate, i would assume that this game sold like 10% on ps4 what watchdogs sold on wii u. That would be 8k. And the company keeps doing more old games port. So if even THAT is profitable...i dont know...

vg charts tracked it 0,00 though^^

Watchdogs wii u would easily sold ~200-300k if it would be released same day as other consoles. 

It really seemed ubisoft dont care bout those numbers, maybe big publishers in general. I guess even if they do get like 2mio profit of a port they just dont care. The big money will be made on ps/xbox and those wii u millions are like peanuts for the big publisher. 

don't forget that the ports might very well turn out to be sub par, which would cause even more frustration for the customer base.

well okay my conclusion may be:

They dont even care about the millions they could make on wii u .
If im right and they earn 20$ per sold game (seems possible) this may be 4mio on a wii u. Yeah.

but if they sell 9mio on ps, thats 180mio. ~360mio xbox and ps combines.

So if your doing buisness with those high numbers, you pretty much dont care of getting 1 or 2 millions on a wii u version.

To be honest, seems overbearing to me. Its like the money just lay on the ground and they dont care, because its just some millions....

Do you realize that a low paid developer makes $70-80k? A good developer makes $90-110K in the midwest... $110-140K on the Coasts. SQAs each make $50-110K, and the actual level testers are around $30K each. On top of those salaries you also have 20-30K in benefits... marketing ... licensing fees. Hardware (my company provides me with an ~$3K laptop... our resident SCEJ developer's machine is closer to 5-8K).

Additionally, porting to the WiiU is hell. At reveal they announced it being more powerful than the PS3/360, but in reality its about he same with a shitty OS, and a stupid game pad to deal with.

Lastly, you are assuming every sale is Full price $60. Games drop in price, there are game returns, and other factors that affect your sales.

No company simply denies money. Playstation and xbox simply need these big companies more than Nintendo does. This way they can have better control of the market and of the platforms. It's strategy.

3rd party blockbusters are skipping the Wii U, because there aren't enough players that buy their games on Nintendo consoles.
That is the fault of Nintendo, because Nintendo do not have the IPs, and exclusives, that compete with the same market as games like AC or CoD or GTA.

Why should you buy a Wii U over a PS4 or XB for Destiny/Titanfall/Call of Duty/Assassins Creed, if you don't get other games from their respective genres, like you do from Sony or Microsoft?

3rds are not bound to one console or the other, so why should they put in the ressources to build up said player base?

And as others in this thread have said, they'll make more money having those 30 people working on another project.

Exept it's not. As a buisness you have a limited amount of ressources (money, saff and whatnot). If the buisness is run well it will be carefull as to where these ressources are allocated to.

I mean its the same as asking Nintendo why aren't you (or haven't you been) makeing F-zero games. The answer is because it makes more money to do a mario/zelda/whatever game. And then you ask why don't you have another studio make it? Because haveing another studio make a mario/zelda/whatever game is more profitable. So why aren't they handing it to yet another studio? And thats because they only have so much money to make so many games.

Same goes for ports. Ubisoft would probably rather spend money on anualizing watch dogs than putting those ressources in wii u ports, just because it makes them more money. And they can't do both because they only have so much of it.

It's called opportunity costs. Every buisness opperates under that principle. Look it up.

Also excuse my spelling, i'on a phone.

Yeah but they might be people who would enjoy cod/destiny/titanfally/AC AND zelda/mario kart/co

yeah all that costs for system licesne (doubt they are high on wii u) and dropping prices are considered as i said 20$ in average.

They also never used "good" developer on any wii u port yet (well tantalus might be).

Also the 30 persons are not working 365 days/year on the port. Compare it to the 1000s names mentioned in credits usally.  If you assume 50k and 20 people who worked completly one year on a port you are at around 1-1,5 mio$ porting cost.

Just use my others examples with risen 3 or witcher 3. Keep that costs in mind, a port cant be that expensive.