The way I have heard it/understand it:

About six months after the release of Hot Pursuit, Nintendo, EA, and Criterion were working on Wii U devkits to port the engine to the system. Somewhere along the line, EA got really insistent about Autolog being mandatory for anyone with a Nintendo Network ID (which, back then, did not have a name or enough information for EA to go on).

Something broke down and EA decided Need for Speed did not need to be a Wii U launch title.