Wii U & the persnickety developers.

Yep, no need to take it personal though which sadly some Nintendo fans will & that just leads to such nonsense of folk not deciding to buy future Ubi games.

You want better 3rd party support? Then its simple, buy the games.

I do want third-party support: just not that third-party support. I'd have bought Legends had it released on time.

You may not like those partucular genres but they are important games for the wii U to have, oh and sure anyone has the right to be annoyed about the Legends delay (I was too) but you really should be over it by now.

Ubisoft are one of the wii U's best 3rd party supporters as well & despite zombi U's poor sales performance they're still looking to give us their biggest titles like Splinter cell & Watch_Dogs so I think they deserve to be a miffed as to why folk aren't buying.

Oh no, I completely understand things from their perspective.  I'm still a little sceptical about the sense of linking the performance of a zombie-shooting survival horror with that of a 2D platformer, especially on the Wii U, but I do understand where they're coming from.  In my CVG article comments, I mentioned that if Nintendo had promoted ZombiU more (as Oldschool suggested in the OP), or even just promoted their console more (perhaps using ZombiU to approach the "mature" angle), things might have turned out differently.

As to being over the Legends thing... meh.  Time hasn't changed the facts of the matter, but I can agree with their disappointment over Wii U performance as a reason to go multiplat.  At the same time, I still feel they should have released the game in March, and then said "take it or leave it" to MS.

The way I see it is Legends is still going to be great despite the fact of how long its took to get here so to still be annoyed by it is a tad childish.

Once it was decided to go multi platform due to Microsofts contract they simple couldn't say "take it or leave it"

I don't see why not.  They could still have released it on Sony platforms, and then it'd be MS' choice as to whether they wanted to miss out.

I guess for me this is a case of "morality", which is a funny thing to apply to corporates but which can make the difference concerning customer retention.  The game was ready to ship; they'd set a release date; and to change it so near said date was a stab in the back, it felt.  And it still feels that way to be honest, despite what they've said, and the admittedly underwhelming sales of ZombiU.  The challenge mode felt weak compensation, albeit at least there was some compensation.

Given that things are the way they are, a boycott would probably have the opposite of the desired effect anyway. I still don't care much for Rayman though, and I'll have other Wii U games to occupy me when it comes out. (Which is another problem Ubi will have.) So my purchase remains in the balance. And I still don't care for what Ubisoft did, but since you think that's "childish" I doubt we'll see eye-to-eye on that, so let's drop it here.

I wonder how many copies a game like ZombiU has to sell in order to be profitable? That's one of Wii U's best-selling games too, am I right? I have no idea why Nintendo's marketing strategy is so relaxed - they've done virtually nothing to persuade anyone but the hardcore to even try a Wii U, let alone plant £300 on one.

While I don't think the Wii U will be 'a distant third' behind XBone and PS4 (as I don't see both of those selling in huge numbers at the same time), I can't foresee a lazarus-like recovery like the 3DS has has over the last twelve months or so.

It's sold 0.46m, according to the perennially unreliable VGChartz: http://www.vgchartz.com/game/70793/zombiu/  That doesn't include digital figures though.  Is that bad for a non-Nintendo game on a Nintendo console?

@balla To clarify a bit, what I was saying is childish is to still be annoyed about the delay (not sure if you are or not tbh) but it happened & nothing can be done to change that.

Also the reason they couldn't just release it on wii U before 360/ps3 is because of a clause in the contract I mentioned........but aye I've said all I'm going to.

~~~

As for what a game has to sell to make a profit? That all depends on how much the game cost to produce the Tomb Raider reboot for example sold 3.4 million (I think) but is still considered a flop to square Enix.

I now wonder what third-party games would sell well on Wii U...Banjo-Threeie, perhaps? Maybe that's all that would. Or, developers start to take the SoulCalibur 2 approach and stick a popular Nintendo character in their multiformat game. EA made an arse of Mass Effect 3 as Yoshi wasn't the main commander/space marine/intergalactic headhunter (or whaever trekkie bollocks Mass Effect is all about).

I think some more JRPGs would probably go down pretty well.

No really, they probably would.  I don't think MH3's done too badly.

EDIT: 0.38m (VGChartz again).  Well that's fewer than I thought.  I think it'll take Nintendo to get the console off the ground, and then the other games will start to sell.

EDITEDIT: Further research shows that exactly six third-party Gamecube games (the Gamecube seems the best comparison at this stage, frankly) sold more than 1m according to Wikipedia.  Three were Resident Evil games, two were Sonic games, and one was Soul Calibur II.  Pressure's on Lost World, then...

Balladeer wrote:

I think some more JRPGs would probably go down pretty well.

No really, they probably would.  I don't think MH3's done too badly.

EDIT: 0.38m (VGChartz again).  Well that's fewer than I thought.  I think it'll take Nintendo to get the console off the ground, and then the other games will start to sell.

EDITEDIT: Further research shows that exactly six third-party Gamecube games (the Gamecube seems the best comparison at this stage, frankly) sold more than 1m according to Wikipedia.  Three were Resident Evil games, two were Sonic games, and one was Soul Calibur II.  Pressure's on Lost World, then...

Even that launch title Castlevania on the GBA swiftly sold a million, crazy to think about nowadays.

Don't think JRPGs would help too much if I'd be honest, unless it were a new exclusive release. But HD JRPGs require huge budgets (hence the rise of the JRPG on handhelds this generation), something that's not feasible for a single platform unless Nintendo get their wallet out. Which they won't do. Or unless the audience is already there (it isn't), so third parties just won't take the risks.

As mentioned, Monster Hunter failed to give Wii U a huge start, and Dragon Quest X did little to boost Wii U sales. So the Japanese public just doesn't seem interested in ports of existing games which have already reached sales saturation.

Interestingly, though, is how Wii U's third party support has been ~90% titles from western publishers and developers so far...

I was reading some where japan only have 23 games on wiiu, i know there fairly loyal to Nintendo (looks at 3DS vs Vita/PSP) but the Japanese public must be considering the PS4 as there main console with things like final fantasy xv , kingdom hearts 3 etc. yes also on xbone but japan is a tier 2 country, and the xbone will sell about 10 skus in it's live time over there so it's pretty much irreverent.  

I've said before people like me are the problem I buy a Nintendo console to play Nintendo games and that's pretty much it (with a few expectations) and know people whom will buy a wiiu when a certain Nintendo series is out on it (so will sell in the end). So when it comes to a 3rd party game I buy on my other systems, I don't know why I always have. So Nintendo have to convince why i should buy something like batman arkham origins on the wiiu over ps3 version.

The extra features that the game pad brings?

Yeah nintendo have to show why these extra features are great, maybe batman was a bad example let's take call of duty. I've played black ops 2 on wiiu and it's good, I bought to see how a FPS handles on a wiiu but I can't see me buying ghosts (if i even buy it) on wiiu due to smaller online community, lack of dlc, a few other things a map on a screen isn't going to make me buy it on wiiu.

also balla top 10 cube games that aren't Nintendo with 5 being SEGA here

Sonic Adventure 2 Battle 2.56m
Sonic Mega Collection 2.05m
Star Wars Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron II 1.90m
Resident Evil 4 1.69m
Sonic Heroes 1.60m
Super Monkey Ball 2 1.52m
SoulCalibur II 1.50m
Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles 1.49m
Super Monkey Ball 1.46m
Resident Evil 1.42m 30th best seller worldwide

Hmm. Wikipedia tells a slightly different story, but their list may be out of date.

if you read brackets, it says usa and japan only, wheres mine is worldwide.

Sonic Adventure 2: Battle?  I think it's more likely just in need of some updating. (Although 100,000 does seem an awfully round figure, and awfully round for the UK in particular... I think the editor in question may have just pulled those out of their backside.)

Hmmm... the lesson here seems to be "don't make a AAA launch title unless you're first-party". The WiiU launch is not too different to the PS3, which sorted itself out. However, no-one's patient any more. The world is broken.  

Having said that, I really looked the like of ZombiU and I haven't bought it yet. Er... sorry.

PS3 launch was better then the WiiU's

First time I've seen that .gif outside CVG!

I spent a stupid amount of time trying to find a suitable one.

Regards Rayman Legends, I'm not bitter about it. The fact is though that I am completely spoilt for choice when it comes to 2D platforming on Wii U, so RL won't necessarily be my first choice.

However, an "insider" told me that Splinter Cell: Blacklist is one of those dreaded "test games." Apparently, a lot of third parties are going to be looking at the Wii U sales of that game to see whether it's worth continuing with Wii U support. Why that game? Who knows.

TL:DR Want third party support? Buy Splinter Cell.

In which case, third-party support can off.