LOL!

rol says it all, nintendo is like google, innovative

So many different reasons:

- Nintendo create games by concentrating and nailing the gameplay and game mechanics first to ensure they're easily accessible to a large audience. Everything else is secondary.
- Reusing well-known and popular characters for the past 20 yrs. Everyone knows Mario and Yoshi etc. so why not use them to sell a game in another genre?
- Linked to the last point, superb advertising and marketing.
- Not over-saturating your franchises with too many titles in too short space of time. Unlike Call of Duty and other franchises, you don't get that many Mario, Zelda, Kart, Smash Bros. games in a gen and Nintendo let the games sell for as long as possible.
- Linked to the first point: the games are targeted at the largest demographic possible meaning a much larger customer base.

People count Wii Sports because it is what sold the system. Also, Wii Sports Resort 14million and growing over 100k a week almost a year after it came out. Going by your lack of games/competeing  statement means Sony and MS and well every other gaming company is only releasing shitty games as they are competeing in the market. There are plenty of good games on every system even the Wii, it just depends on your taste and playstyle. The part that sets Nintendo apart from the rest is the constant sells blow away the rest and has for years no matter the system.

I've mentioned this before but Nintendo has a different yard stick than everyone else. A 1-2m seller isn't a success to Nintendo. They are not trying to make games that sell in that amount.

Look at the top selling games of all time, Nintendo practically owns the top 30 with GTA and maybe GT being the only non-Nintendo titles. Nor is Nintendo's success from this generation alone.

Nintendo looks to make games that sell in the double-digits of millions. That's a successful game to Nintendo. In order to sell that well a game must appeal to a wide audience and that's the one thing Nintendo consistantly does that no one else in the business does, makes games for everyone, not one particular subset of 'gamers'. Of course Nintendo has it's Zelda's and Metroids which have their followings and are pretty much guaranteed to make money but they are not really Nintendo's bread and butter.

Nintendo has said how they succeed many times: They have a small group work on an idea for months or even years until they really nail the addictive fun factor of the idea and then they build a game around that then polish it like crazy. PopCap does the same.
Everyone else goes for 'cool, epic' and then tries to shoehorn the fun in. Or they find something fun and make a game without taking the time to really find that addictive quality of the idea or polish it enough. Games like De Blob and Boom Blox come to mind.
Or they just copy what's already working (yet another FPS).

It's all in finding the addictiveness of the fun. Look at WoW and CoDMW. Neither did anything novel or new but they found what made their genres really addictively fun, and focused on that, built the epicness around the gameplay and polished, polished, polished.

Nintendo just does that as a matter of course.

What?  There are way more mario games than Call of Duty games.  I would be willing to bet that there are more mario games this gen than CoD has in its entire history.  I could be wrong, if I am, I'm sure the number is very close.

OT:  The Wii has done a great job of appealing to people who didn't play games in previous gens, while still appealing to traditional gamers.  They marketed the Wii as a console for the whole family where the PS3 & 360 are marketed mainly for the hardcore audience (at least in my region).  I don't think the games are any more fun on the Wii than any other console, but it is a different kind of fun, a kind of fun that, at least until Natal & Move, is not available on the other systems.

Also don't overlook the fact that the games are cheaper than the HD consoles.  This is not a overwhelmingly huge factor, but with the way the economy has been for this gen it certainly helps.

Lots of games with Mario as a character and selling point, yes, hence the comment about reusing popular characters. Now look at the gameplay mechanics of each of those games:

• Mario Galaxy: 3D platformer
• New Super Mario Bros.: 2D platformer
• Mario Kart: Weapons based Kart racer
• Super Smash Bros. : Non-traditional beat em up
• Mario & Sonic @ the Olympics/Winter Olympics: OK 2 games, but family sports titles with range of different gameplay options
• Super Paper Mario: 2D/3D mix

Now look at Call of Duty:

• CoD 1-3 & WaW: World War 2 pseudo realistic FPS
• COD4 & MW2: Modern setting pseudo realistic FPS

Which is more likely to oversaturate its fanbase? Although there a lot of Mario games, the gameplay and mechanics in each is different to the next. And CoD is now an annual release making things worse for that particular franchise.

Look at the big picture guys. Do you really think that Nintendo simply has something speshul that no other company can think of? Their sales are hard to match. Even for horrendous failures like wiimusic.
The nintendo titles are always the highest selling ones on any nintendo system, and other companies barely have a chance within the platform, and outside the platform, they still can't match the sales.
C'mon now, use your brains a little bit. It's not magic or some jenesequoi that you've been trained to think. It's marketing and business strategy.

Seriously, do you really think that out of the thousands of games that get released in a generation, the Nintendo ones are the most fun? :Pokes eyeball:

"Seriously, do you really think that out of the thousands of games that get released in a generation, the Nintendo ones are the most fun?"

Yes

Yeah, I do.