With the original Wii, I feel like there were some obvious trends, some that came out right away, some that arose in time. A few of them off the top of my head:

Sports collections
Other mini-game collections
Point and click shooters (often in the horror genre)
Point and click adventure games (more on WiiWare, I guess mostly from Telltale...)
Gritty-over the top violent games (an odd trend for the Wii)
2D Platformers (mostly the 2nd half of the Wii, mostly from Nintendo, but there were some others)

It's tough to predict with the Wii U, but here are a few that I think will catch on:

Chase collections (I think this will be the new sports collection)
Other mini-game collections (yeah this trend will never end)
Zombie games (probably mostly ports, if ZombiU does well)
Other ports... in a random, mostly unpredictable fashion

Um... I dunno. What else? I guess it is still too early to see any major trends.

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Don't forget dance games for Wii

I think there'll be a lot of player vs. player asymmetrical multiplayer games, although that doesn't really fit into a specific genre.

I think "Super Gore" will be the "Hardcore" player thing. --Oh, got Ninja Gaiden for Christmas, too..

Sloppy ports done by the C team.

I do think there's an outside chance we could see a spike in decent Family oriented games that take advantage of the asymmetric potential of the Wii U.

And did I mention sloppy ports?

I think Kris is right. In most cases, the quality of the game is directly proportional to the knowledge of the player. A casual player won't care or is oblivious to items that core gamers believe to be the standard. With that I'd say...

Okay ports (hopefully this will only get better)
A few exclusive core shooters/horror games that won't sell all that well
Fantastic 1st party software that shows off what 3rd parties need to do
Horrible mini game compilations

I see the first year of the Wii and DS combined for Wii U as of right now. I hope to see more partnerships with Nintendo and 3rd parties. They've already done an outstanding job of that with their hardware and built in software partnerships.

All of the above are probably true, but I'd also add that maybe the Wii U will see more exclusive games from 3rd parties that are published by Nintendo. Think of The Wonderful 101 and Bayonetta 2, and you'll see what I mean.

Who knows, maybe we'll see some 3rd parties take a stab at Nintendo's first-party franchises, like Starfox Assault and F-Zero GX (Gamecube).

Hmm yeah, the early Platinum Games support is nice, I wonder if that will be a trend or just a specific thing with that company though.

One thing I really think that we will see is the Walking Dead games come to the Wii U in some form. I'd be a bit surprised if they didn't. Zombie games seem to hit Nintendo consoles even when few other "mature" games do, add in a super popular TV show (which means even casualz could bite) and the fact that it is a point and click by Telltale (who actually supported the Wii) and yeah... I think it has to be coming?

We'll see.

GameDadGrant said:

All of the above are probably true, but I'd also add that maybe the Wii U will see more exclusive games from 3rd parties that are published by Nintendo. Think of The Wonderful 101 and Bayonetta 2, and you'll see what I mean.

Who knows, maybe we'll see some 3rd parties take a stab at Nintendo's first-party franchises, like Starfox Assault and F-Zero GX (Gamecube).

I think you hit the nail on the head! One could even presume that the companies who get the opportunity to release exclusives published by Nintendo are the ones that might have a hand in developing Nintendo's franchises. I could see Nintendo really trying to establish relationships with key publishers/studios for this reason.

^ they're already letting Namco sorta do that with Smash.

I'm predicting the Wii U brings back 2d side scrollers, but its going to be a lot of co-op games like Rayman and how you help in Mario

I think the Wii U will take the reigns of JRPG from Sony or at least have a larger stake in it. I expect the 1st party games to be some of the best on the system as usual. The eShop will shine with a quite a few indie titles than Wii. I don't know if we'll see an eShop exclusive on par with something like Journey but I hope so. I agree with Kris that there will be a lot of sloppy (western dev imo) ports or stripped down versions that seem to give Nintendo the shaft.

@vids Why wouldn't we see an eShop game on the level of Journey?! I think it will happen. Trine 2 is a pretty beautiful and meaty game.

Indie support I reckon is going to be massive for Wii U. From what I have seen of most popular indie games, they take a lot of inspiration from old school Nintendo.

@Zero I was thinking more along the lines of a solid high concept artful experiment exclusively available as download only on eShop. ThatGameCompany (and Team Ico) games felt like a territory Nintendo should be venturing in. I'm sure we'll see some great eShop exclusives but not sure they'll reach GOTY potential.

@vids Hmm. See I guess it depends on what you consider GOTY potential. Both Pushmo and Fluidity to me were bigger, better games than Journey, and those had Nintendo themselves behind them (publishing in Fluidity's case), so they were exclusives too. But they weren't as artsy.

Honestly, I hope MMOs take off on this system, the controller is very helpful for that genre and I can see FFXIV doing very well on it.

@Zero

Don't forget they published NG3 and are also publishing Rayman Legends in Japan. I think they are going to be doing a lot of it going forward. Maybe Nintendo will get involved in the porting process to ensure the ports at least have parity or possibly even overshadow the other console versions.

@vids

Isn't this the sort of thing Miyamoto wants to be working on?

@warerare I sure hope so. Last I read he wanted to work on smaller games. Hopefully that means new IP and something meatier than going retro / back to his earlier work.

I'm just curious to see the excuses 3rd parties come up with this generation, and which ones wise up. For example, Gearbox is stating Aliens: Colonial Marines is going to be best experienced on the Wii U. That right there feels like a breaking of ranks; I'm sure they won't be the last.

@Deerock69

Last I heard the game had a release date for other platforms but the Wii U version was TBD.

This list is depressing if you're hoping for third party ports on Wii U, at least for next year.