It could be a while before this shows up

In a rather surprising announcement during last month's Nintendo Direct, it was revealed that select games from the Wii catalogue would be making their way onto the Wii U eShop; it's been the first time that full scale Wii retail games have been available to download. Since then four Nintendo games have shown up (three each in Europe and North America) and while no others have been announced yet, it can be safely assumed that more will be added in good time. This raises the question, though: will there be third party games too?

In an attempt to answer this question, Destructoid reached out to Nintendo to see what it had to say, but the big N simply offered a "no comment". Naturally this could mean that an announcement of some third party material is right around the corner - let's not forget the upcoming financial briefing on 17th February - or it could just mean that there's currently nothing in the works. Whatever happens, third party games such as No More Heroes, Red Steel 2, Madworld, Muramasa: The Demon Blade, and Klonoa would be incredibly welcome on the eShop, and would help to pad out gaps in the release schedule. Disappointingly the run of Wii games arriving on the eShop was broken this week, with no fresh arrivals in the Download Update in either Europe or North American.

For reference, the following are already confirmed and expected in Europe at some point - Kirby's Return to Dream Land, Pandora's Tower, Sin & Punishment: Successor of the Skies and Punch-Out!!, the latter of which has already been released in North America. These are all games produced and / or published by Nintendo.

We'll keep you posted on further developments for the Wii line-up on Wii U. In the meantime, what were some of your favourite third party games that you'd like to see on the eShop? Let us know in the comments below, and don't forget to check out our list of 20 Wii games we'd love to see on the Wii U eShop, in Part One and Part Two.