There will never be an exclusive GTA console title. Doesn't matter how much money Nintendo offered - the games bring in too much money. It's not quite as delusional as imagining anyone could afford to bring a COD title exclusive, but it's not too far from it either.
This. There are two simple formulae that will determine whether Wii U will get big third-party games, and whether they'll be able to pay for exclusivity for any of them. The first:
Profit = Extra Revenue - Extra Development Costs
Basically, devs/publishers will port their games to the Wii U if the extra revenue from the Wii U version is greater than the cost of porting to the Wii U. This equation is the reason we didn't see games like GTA IV for the Wii, these games would have basically had to be rebuilt from scratch, which would have cost a hell of a lot of money and brought in rather little revenue, as the audience for these sorts of games would have preferred to buy the better-looking PS360 version. It's also the reason that we
will be getting all the major third party multi-platform releases on the Wii U, because doing a lazy port of the XBox360/Next XBox version will be cheap and easy, meaning even very low sales would be enough for profitability.
The second formula is for those thinking we'll get a GTA V Wii U exclusive:
Exclusivity Cost = Revenue From A Multi-platform Release - Revenue From A Wii U Exclusive Release - Saved Development Costs - Brand Costs From Lower Sales
A Wii U exclusive release of something like GTA V would bring in a lot less money than a multi-platform release, and the saved development costs would be pretty minuscule in comparison (especially as almost all these games are based on multi-platform engines in the first place). Just as important, though, are the brand costs that go along with exclusivity. If your big franchise goes from selling, say, 10 million units to 2 million units, this has a big long term negative effect on the selling power of that game's brand. This is something that companies take very seriously, and the amount of money it would take to offset it would be pretty damn huge. Taking the entire equation into account, it wouldn't be a stretch to say that Nintendo would have to pony up several hundred million for something like GTA.
So, the Wii U
is going to get the big third-party multi-platform titles, but
isn't going to get them as exclusives. And, let's be honest, the developers aren't going to put a whole lot of effort into the ports, considering it's a new console with a small install base, and an as-yet unknown demographic. Given this, it would be a good strategy for Nintendo not to money-hat devs for exclusives, but rather money-hat devs to put extra effort into the Wii U versions, in particular ensuring that they have noticeably better graphics than the PS360 versions and good use of the Wii U pad. This wouldn't cost nearly as much for Nintendo, and it would achieve Nintendo's goal of pulling in a lot of "core" gamers who want the best versions of these games. Do this for the first few years along with a few big first-party titles targeted at the same audience, and Nintendo could establish themselves relatively well for these kinds of games for the coming generation.