Nintendo has to show publishers and developers something to stand up and take notice of. They lack the trust in Nintendo's ability to draw in a mature audience and the only thing that will bring it back is sales and demographics. Take Western developers for example, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One support was practically a given, because publishers trusted Sony and Microsoft to build platforms that their audience would purchase. Nintendo has lost that. And part of Nintendo's issue is the chicken-egg dilemma, no games for those demographics and the publishers putting only half-hearted efforts means consumers perceive the platform as lesser and remain with Sony/MS.
Ubisoft had a solid time on the Wii. Just Dance has always proved amazingly strong for Ubisoft on the Wii. Still does, seeing as the
November NPD had Just Dance 2016's best-selling platform being the Wii. Rabbids and Rayman are also great sellers on Nintendo platforms, so that's where the resources go.
So Ubisoft gave Nintendo a go, probably because Nintendo promised them a more traditional platform this time around with the Wii U. Let's look at the full force of their trust. Assassin's Creed: Black Flag was
ported by 15 people within Ubisoft Quebec, while the primary developers continued work on the PS4/Xbox One versions.
Same deal with III, Ubisoft did it in-house, but it was a fraction of their effort, because again... they didn't believe in the platform. Here's AC3's animation director
talking about the Wii U version, which the main development team had little to do with.
Watch_Dogs represents the last bit of their efforts on the Wii U. But again, the main development team didn't handle the game. Ubisoft Montreal did the PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One versions of the game.
Wii U?
ZombiU is the only mature Wii U title they put significant resources behind. From a corporate standpoint, the rest was as half-assed as you can get and
it still wasn't worth it.
Ubisoft likes Nintendo, for their family-friendly audience. That works well with certain games. But no, they have no trust in the Nintendo when it comes to mature rated titles. That's not a buddy-buddy thing, that's just the cold, hard facts.