A third party can't just port a game to the Wii U like flicking a switch. They have to devote some time and effort to learning the hardware. Those same third parties are likely working on their next gen games right now.
No one said it was like flicking a switch. However, no one believes it's difficult as evidenced, once again, by a developer opening admitting to doing so with their main title in a matter of weeks. They're not being tasked to push the hardware; just port assets. And many 3rd parties don't handle ports anyway so even if they are working on a PS3/360 game or an Orbis/Durango game, that's not really an issue. They work on the lead platform and Random Developer #487726 handles the ports. It didn't make a whole lot of sense for EA, for example, to say, "Gee, Straight Right work on Mass Effect 3 for Wii U and we'll release it without the 1st 2 RIGHT F-ING AFTER we release the entire trilogy for the same price on PS3 and 360." They could have had Straight Right work on a Wii U version of Dead Space 3 that entire time and released it alongside the others today. It came out today. I don't know if EA commented on the sales of the Wii U version of ME3, but if they're disappointed, they have no one to blame but themselves.
But I don't buy into this "third parties just hate Nintendo" nonsense that started up on the Wii. The Wii was the best selling console. It would not have been good business sense to ignore it for petty reasons. Now not all third parties have good business sense but for damn near ALL of them to think that way just isn't probable. They didn't support it because it didn't fit their business strategy of multiplatform development.
I don't buy it either. They were just flat-out f-ing stupid sometimes (see: above). EA has just been weird regarding Wii U so maybe they're not the best example. With Wii, 3rd parties in general bet on the wrong horse. Win some, lose some. Everyone was excited about the HD era until companies were going under left and right. What do they do with all those titles in the works? They can't cancel them because they invested too much; it was safer to see the projects through and cross their fingers that they make it back. Square Enix is still fiddling with Final Fantasy Versus XIII.
Yeah, porting to the Wii was impossible, but porting to the Wii U is not, especially not right now. 3rd parties have
at least a year or 2 to port their best over to an audience ready and willing to support them so long as they're not treated like 2nd class gamers. "Let's just not port anything." What? How does that even make sense? That's a bad business decision because they're leaving money on the table. There doesn't need to be a Wii specific version this time. They Wii U version
is the PS3/360 version.
I'm not terribly convinced that Orbis/Durango launch/1st year (maybe even 2nd year) titles are going to be so advanced that Wii U can't handle them. It has a more modern design and it's already more powerful than the current generation. 3rd parties have to devote time and effort on those new consoles too. This is why launch titles on new consoles typically don't look a whole generation better than the later titles of the previous generation. Can the Wii U handle that? It may not be that much of a stretch. And again, scalability. However, I have a feeling 3rd parties are going to do Judo flips and dodge that very real fact. They're not going HD to SD; they'd only have to go HD to HD and scale it down. We already saw it this generation. Crytek got the Crysis series on PS3/360. Wasn't that **** never supposed to happen?
I just do not believe that the specs have anything to do with support, not anymore anyway. It's just a convenient excuse to use when cornered. It simply doesn't work when you're talking to any mildly intelligent person. I don't know what the real reasons are. Maybe they just don't believe in Wii U as a platform. That's not going to change if 3rd parties have no presence there.