Can you offer an alternative reason for them having an "unprecedented partnership", only to begin sabotaging the few games they were making for the system before the system even released? It can't be how well the Wii U sold, because they sabotaged Mass Effect 3 prior to release by announcing Mass Effect Trilogy for the other systems before it released. They sabotaged Madden and Fifa by basing them on older engines, so that they were far inferior to the PS3/360 versions. And they sabotaged Need for Speed by delaying it (they could easily have provided a bit of extra funding to get it finished on time) and then announcing that they weren't going to support the Wii U any more before NfS even released.

So clearly *something* happened behind the scenes between Nintendo and EA, and I can see no other explanation.

You're over complicating this: its simple, Nintendo has a far stronger first party lineup than Sony or Microsoft. Sony fans for example tend to be loyally hardcore more for the companies hardware than software. I'm not even going to explain the gigantic missing front for Microsoft's first party games..... then you have Nintendo, with their Mario Kart, Smash, Zelda, Pokemon, etc.- the point is that that Nintendo, of the hardware manufacturers, by far has the most known and consumer powerful software

Of course its going to be more attractive for an EA or Activision to bring their titles to platforms in which their games are the stars, front and center. Since Nintendo releases so many of its own popular million selling exclusives, they slightly turn off third parties, because the software sales pool is already in a way taken

What comparable IPs are Sony or Micro releasing that distract system owners at the level that Mario Kart or Pokemon do Nintendo owners? Answer: almost none

Nintendo's software success in itself is what has damaged their ties with third parties.. their own IPs sell too well for an EA to feel comfortable investing a lot in releases (that and arguably demographic issues)

Nintendo fans at the start of a gen: '' I only buy Nintendo consoles for Nintendo games!''
Nintendo fans mid gen:'' Where the fuc* are third party games?''
Nintendo fans at the end of a gen:'' screw third parties, I'll only buy the next Nintendo console for Nintendo games!''

Don't forget game developers are not in the business to break even

We need as many publishers as possible on NX

They simply don't want to take the time to create something unique on another platform that won't receive that game well, and thus not create enough profit for the time and money it spent to create that software. It makes sense, and that's why Nintendo needs the NX to be something simple and unique to stay on par with current consoles

Well its more dependent on how EA titles sell there, userbase and software sales don't necessarily go hand in hand. I mean EA games were doing well on Xbox One when the userbase was a lot smaller.

I used vgcharts numbers but...

Nintendo's average for home console sales is 46.81 mil. 

Sony's average for home console sales is 97.2 mil. I counted the PS4 at 40 mil btw.

Microsoft's average for home console sales is 43.7 mil. The xbox one is counted at what vgcharts has it at.

Sony is better at selling consoles and more importantly it tries to cultivate a lucrative relationship with devs/pubs with deals on ports/funding/marketing/exclusivity. MS pays for all the same stuff as sony does but mostly only with western devs/pubs. That's probably why xbox consoles don't really have any japanese game support.  It seems nintendo doesn't pay for anything to grease the wheels on getting ports from 3rd party especially with the west.  

If sony does all of this extra stuff to get exclusives, ports and extra content when their consoles sell better than their competition then what the hell is nintendo doing or rather not doing? And people wonder why nintendo consoles don't really get 3rd party support.

Demographics likely play a major part too. Lets be honest, Nintendo doesn't really appeal to the "jock audience". Generally speaking most third party major titles are either A) Violent action games or B) sports/driving simulator. Oh and then you have wacky Japanese action game with girl with giant tits that will have to be censored in the US market causing the 250 people who were planning to buy it to rage out.

But that's kind of a microcosm of the market. Truth be told even in the Super NES days, EA's sports games while they did sell well on the SNES (so did things like NBA Jam) still sold better on the Sega Genesis.

Nintendo isn't "cool" in that way, so they struggle with these types of third party games because they don't attract the audience that buys them.

N64 was probably the last Nintendo system that really had some foothold of appeal to this type of gamer, but this is now almost 20 years ago since GoldenEye (!) and since then Nintendo has probably regressed backwards as a brand to this audience. Gone are things like Perfect Dark, Eternal Darkness, NBA/MLB games, Star Wars games, etc. and as wonderful as Splatoon is, it's not exactly making up for that style of game.

*Maybe* as such Nintendo should perhaps offer to pay for the porting costs of EA titles for the first year or two. Even though EA is far from perfect being completely shut out of the NFL, FIFA, and Star Wars licenses are fairly damaging and plus it will likely cause other big Western developers to back off from providing major support as well. Though Nintendo won't do it, and the results will be somewhat predictable.

They better have an amaze-balls gimmick for the NX and it better be something Sony/MS cannot copy easily, because I gauruntee one of the things MS/Sony would do over about that last gen would be to copy the Wiimote much earlier.

Nintendo really screwed up by not giving the Gamecube any real online capabilities.  They essentially abandoned the audience Rare and other western 3rd parties built on the N64 and just handed them over to Microsoft (and to a lesser extent, Sony) without a fight.

I also agree that Nintendo should chip in on some of the porting/publishing/advertising costs for some of the big western 3rd party titles until Nintendo can prove that there's a viable audience for their games on the NX or until Nintendo just gives up on western 3rd parties.  And I think that's going to be the biggest thing that Nintendo has to prove with the NX (if they want consistent support from western 3rd parties); that western 3rd party games can sell decently enough on it to make it worth their time because as far as I can remember, except for the N64, Nintendo's core fans have largely only cared about Nintendo games and Japanese 3rd party games.

Honestly, If  Nintendo is really serious about getting western 3rd parties back on board then they need to suck it up and try to create a couple of new, marquee 1st party franchises that can be used as entry titles for people to get warmed up to the types of games that western 3rd parties make.  Microsoft has them with franchises like Halo and Gears of War.  Sony has them with Naughty Dog games, Killzone and others.  What does Nintendo have?  Metroid (specifically the Prime series) -- a franchise that they're doing nothing substantial with.

You forgot Nintendo fans end gen: "Where the fuc* are my Nintendo games?" I never really went through the second phase. I just wanted a Metroid....