So much wrong here, Pie. If you don't consider the revenue then you aren't getting a clear picture of the actual market. It's the same mistake made when claiming that Apple's App Store is devouring the traditional market; unit sales are incredibly high, but the actual revenue spent in that entire ecosystem is less than what any one AAA game brings in.
Also, which third party, exactly, did worse than they likely expected to? To go back to using the App Store to illustrate a point, Rockstar couldn't support itself selling GTA III/VC for $5 a pop on the App Store, but as a late port they likely made a killing even at that dirt cheap price, as it costs relatively little to port an existing game. In the same sense, EA/Warner Bros/etc already made all the money they expected to make on the earlier versions of their games, and any Wii U sales were just gravy. These late ports only had to sell like 25,000-30,000 copies to make a million dollars in profit (after costs), so the threshold for "success" is much lower.
