Are third parties giving up on the Wii U in Australia?

The troubling situation with third party titles and the Wii U here in Australia has been in the past limited to one publisher, Activision.

Since launch they’ve chosen not to release 007 Legends, The Walking Dead Survival Instinct, Angry Birds Trilogy, Fast & Furious: Showdown, The Amazing Spider-Man Ultimate Edition on the Wii U in Australia.

Hardly the most incredible list of games, but still they were never given the chance to sell.

Now the problem is spreading we’ve noticed several Wii U third party multi-platform titles being removed from retailers’ websites. The Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and even in the case of some games the Nintendo 3DS versions remain. The Wii U versions are presumably being cancelled.

Here’s what we found so far:

Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures (Namco Bandai) originally slated for the Wii U on November 28th is now only listed for the Nintendo 3DS, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Here’s a link to the cached version of EB Games to show it was there not too long ago. If you do a search now, it’s missing.

Likewise the upcoming Young Justice Legacy (cache) title nor the Barbie Dreamhouse Party game (cache) appear on the site. These are both Warner Brothers games who have been great supporters of the Wii U so far. Their release list too is also missing The Lego Movie Videogame for the Wii U for next year.

All of these games are not huge releases, someone somewhere out there though is surely looking forward to them – they just won’t be able to buy them on the Wii U. There is the possibility that the EB Games site could be wrong, other retailers are listing some of these games still. However, EB Games are the only retailers in Australia who sell games who are able to manage their website with proficiency, so if it’s not on their site – it’s not coming.

This is just three games out of many more that are coming to the Wii U but when games such as these are getting cancelled, it’s only time before something big goes missing.

We’ve also found a couple of cases where the Wii U versions of certain games have been delayed only. The first is this week’s release of Batman: Arkham Origins, in December, it’s the new Adventure Time game – but only on the Wii U and 3DS. Assassin’s Creed IV was also pushed back on the Wii U to match that of the next gen releases – a compliment perhaps or another instance of this delay?

We’ve contacted the distributors of these titles for comment but haven’t heard back yet on these particular issues.

Are Wii U sales that bad in Australia that lower key titles such as this aren’t even worth releasing?

All signs point to yes.