I don't think it's so simple. Developing on a weaker console is not necessarily easier, you have to learn how to use the console, spend time to understand how things works. One of the reasons why IMO there are soo many shooters, made with Unreal Engine 3 in particular, is because it's simple to produce them. The UE3 eviroment is specifically made to develop FPSs and it's optimized for X360 and PS3, this makes things a lot easier from a programmer point of view, add that publishers have trained their staff to specifically to use UE. What I mean is, if you are a low to average team it's probably easier to develop a decent game on HD twins than developing a good game from the ground up on Wii.

If Bionic commando and Dark void flopped it's because they were bad games, this could mean 2 things: the dev teams were not good enough or simply they didn't have enough time to fine-tune the games. In both cases, if they decided to develop on Wii, the results wouldn't be so different.

Haze was a launch title and was rushed, is not a good example, on the contrary it confirms my first statement. Free Radical had to get accostumed with the ps3 hardware (and its known the cell has been tricky for some time), even a good team needs some time to learn how to work on new consoles.

True, Sony made a considerably important price cut in the fall 2007, (wikipedia:)

"On October 18, 2007, Sony announced a US$100 price drop for the 80 GB model and a new US$399 40 GB model to launch on November 2, 2007^[87] with reduced features such as the removal of backward compatibility with PS2 games. Within weeks, Sony announced that sales of the 40 GB and 80 GB models by major retailers had increased 192%.^[88]"

They did mitigate, it's true. They apparently moneyhatted, otherwise the exclusives they lost to MS, instead of going multi-plat, would have gone MS exclusives.

One thing we know is that many of the multiplats that migrated from Sony to MS (See 2nd paragraph of this PS3 section) initially began as PS3 development. This demonstrates the à priori of developers to work on Sony's console above all else (Wii and 360). However, when Sony faltered, rather than defaulting to the newly popular underdog (the Wii), they defaulted to the next HD system, the 360. Reason being, alot of the work done on the PS3 was high fidelity HD software, and the 360 being easy to develop for, was the logical step.

You are correct to say that Nintendo made a HUGE mistake not to allow for HD content on their machine, while focusing on less graphically intensive content (their strategy for the Wii U as it were...). Otherwise, the multi-plats would have defaulted to them as well...

You said Nintendo didn't moneyhat, but we don't know that! One thing we know for sure is that, even IF Nintendo had moneyhatted, devs would not have wanted to sacrifice all this time spent in HD land. HOWEVER, having said that, seeing the tip of the iceberg approaching (the PS3 failing compared to expectations, and low ROI on HD games), why did they not gradually migrate their efforts to the SD Wii? This ties into Rols point ;) That is their mistake. My understanding is that they lacked business vision. Take it or leave it.

@bold. I don't believe SW sales performance was the reason they continued on the 360 rather than the Wii as explained above. The Wii had a very different userbase. If you take a game targeting 1Mil on the 360, for its userbase, you will surely attain less on the Wii, with a different userbase. But what if, rather than making 360 content on the Wii, what if you made Wii content, on the Wii, and fetch 3Mil rather than 1Mil. True that 3rd parties get nothing from HW sales, but a game that caters to the Wii userbase can fetch more sales given the proportion of total users on the platform as compared to the 360 at the time (3 to 1). The Wii audience does not only enjoy Dance games per se. That's one demographic's preference. The Wii userbase is very varied. A game like Monster Hunter did not fail to please on the Wii. So true that Ubi made a good decision to release JD on the Wii, but what about other kinds of games that appeal to other demographics on the Wii, leading to greater ROI than on the HD consoles? Think about it.

There was no way in hell Nintendo could reverse its poor decision not to support HD, granted. Having said that, there was also no way Sony could reverse the decision to make a platform that lacked RAM and had a poor architecture from the get-go (the components were good, but did not work well as a whole). Yet devs still supported it. You cannot prove to me that Nintendo did not attempt to moneyhat devs, and I can't prove to you that they did. But one thing is certain, the anti-Nintendo sentiment and pro-Sony sentiment at the begining of this generation, as shown by the sheer number of games being made for the (in hindsight) weakest console this gen (see the 2nd para of this PS3 section ), it goes to show some of us Nintendo fans are not talking out of our hats. Odds are, Nintendo attempted to moneyhat, but fell on deaf ears. Their failure was likely a lack of business vision.

Other than that you make excellent points.

The OP is correct. The Nintendo crowd simply aren't interested in the cinematic Hollywood ripoffs that most AAA games are today and thus games like COD, Assassin's Creed and even Skyrim and Red Dead would only sell small numbers on a Nintendo HD console.

Nintendo gamers have radically different gaming tastes, and often even take pride in it, I think that's pretty well established by now. And there's nothing wrong with that.

@bold. This is true.

@italics. The Wii userbase is so varied, you can't say that. I am a Wii player (used to own one, now I only own games -> I moved) and I like Cinematic games. I saw God of War 3 and were not for hack and slash and the excessively brutal violence, I would want to play it due to its cinematic dynamics and visual appeal. I am eager to have a chance to play Uncharted! I like COD and enjoy playing it competitively on my buddies' Xbox 360's.

I'm not a huge fan of AC, but would probably have picked it up to see what the fuss is all about. That's the advantage of having a solid userbase. Even if the game might not cater to a certain crowd, they still might end up picking it up out of convenience (it's on my console of choice and is popular, so might as well try it out), in an environment where one platform is king (like in the PS2 days).

True that I won't just buy a game if it purely has nice graphics (yes the Wii and Nintendo POV encouraged that in me), but I bet most HD gamers won't either. They need incentive, such as depth of story and characters, and interesting gameplay mechanics. Maybe Nintendo gamers are more picky, but all gamers strive for the best overall experience, with graphics taking a supportive role in quality. Those who put graphics above all else are in my eyes not true gamers. It's the game part of video games that counts the most. Video is important, but not primary. It plays a supportive role.

Proof is: You will never find a gamer satisfied with a game that has fancy graphics, but little content appeal (this is probably what Ganondorf7799 meant by games with no soul), but you will find a happy gamer when content is there, but graphics are so-so.

How does Resident Evil Revelations fit into this argument? I mean, one guy said that a game like GTA Chinatown Wars didn't sell on the DS (Personally, I didn't want it because of its top down graphics style) because Nintendo gamers don't want mature titles. Another sexy space captain said that Nintendo gamers embrace unique games and put gameplay before cinematics and graphics.

So, if Res Evil does well, what does this mean?

@happydolphin  If Ninty moneyhatted dont you think we would see the results of moneyhatting?? Unless 3rd parties were taking the money and running. I dont think that is true. The only game that i can see that Ninty made an honest effort with is Monster Hunter, its just not moneyhatting, its working with 3rd parties, something I really doubt they did with Wii, look at 3ds and Wii U, now thats working with 3rd parties. Hell they are doing more for Wii U in relations to third parties than they have EVER done with the WII IMHO. and the damn system isnt even out yet?  Yeah there are some bad decisions made across the board, ill give you that, but as I have stated before its not some anti Wii thing (not all of it) its not all roses for HD consoles either

You really dont think the fact that 360 versions of multiplats were selling had nothing to do with it? The funny thing is is that you said why didnt they make games targeting Wii's userbase. Thats exactly what they did. THere is a reason that there are so many Wii games, the problem is they are called shovelware, let me ask a question. Why is a game like WiiFIt or WiiSports or even Just Dance not considered shovelware,  but their lesser known counterparts are?? Why julian micheals, or deca sports etc. not considered shovelware. Are the more popular ones just that better?? Not from what ive played.  Fact is those "casual" games sell and thats exactly what third parties make. ITs no different from HDs, you'll never see an assload of dancce games on PS3 but you will see an assload of FPSs because thats what sells on PS3. Will we say that 3rd parties have a bias against PS3?? The JD/WiiSports crowd probably makes up about 50% of the Wii user base at the very list and I would bet one of my testicles that most of them not only dont care about AC, COD , etc. They probably dont even know some of these games exist.

Pro sony is a strecth, it might not have gotten the negligence that WIi got but pro?? YOu must have forgotten the whole Valve thing. The newell guy spited bile for years, years then all of a sudden, PS3 is a good system and not only will it get Portal2, it will have features that the 360 version wont have. WAAHH?? Either money or blowjobs were exchanged behind the scenes.  We're just gonna have to agree to disagree, I cant prove that Ninty didnt try, you cant prove they did. Ill just say the proof is in the pudding

Chinatown Wars was not a bad game, it just wasnt what people wanted. For good or ill, GTA can probably never go back to its 2d roots, not if it is expecting big sales. For alot of people GTA3 might as well have been GTA1, Hell how much people here actually played the original GTAs???

Yeah i admit, thats not really the game you wanna use if your going for that argument. It just wasnt a popular game. It was good for what it was, but it wasnt anywhere near console caliber, hell it wasnt even close to PSP ones IMHO

That same guy that came down of PS3 owners for not buying inFamous 2 even though he didn't buy it?  Fuck that guy!

We don't see the results of moneyhatting, because I don't believe the HD devs accepted the money. There were too many other considerations than money at that point, and due to lack of business vision, they didn't see eye to eye with Nintendo, and were not ready to alter their HD course, despite the Wii's newly observed booming success (i.e. they were so reluctant it never happened). Simple as that. However, instead of totally shifting their main strategy games dev, they used cheaper studios to make Wii games. No wonder people don't like the offerings they got. ;)

As Rol reminded me, it takes two to tango. With Capcom, it worked, since Capcom is after all a Nintendo ally. We all remember the Capcom 5 for gamecube, and the Capcom-Nintendo partnership on the Zelda Oracle games. Capcom supported Nintendo during the gamecube era, that says alot about their readiness to help. Same can't be said about the other 3rd parties. you mention that things are looking better with Wii U. Well, that supports the idea that it takes two to tango. Now that devs see Nintendo making the moves in the right direction, they are more ready to participate, hence with the dance is working now. But the way they behave with Nintendo, where the big N needs to be at their best in order for them to comply, is not the same at all as with Sony. It helped of course that Sony was gen king twice in a row, supplanting Nintendo's rule post SNES, so there are reasons to this.

So, things are better now with Wii U. Do you figure Wii's success has anything to do with it. I would think so. So, 3rd party devs are warming up to Nintendo, starting to tango a bit. It reenforces our position that devs were anti-Nintendo to begin with at start of gen, and are only begining to warm up. QED ;)

You have a blindspot Oni. There are:

1) HD Twin-like games: COD, AC, Batman, etc.

2) Dance-shit games in assloads. Plus shovelware. Same category.

And your blindspot

3) Games that fit the Wii perfectly, but are neither dance games, nor shovelware. Think Killer 7, or MH Tri ;)

For category 3, obviously some devs tried, and nothing came of it. I'm thinking Lost in Shadow for example. But they are stupid to be frank. Lost in Shadow was a 2D game for heaven sakes. Like Rayman Origin, all they needed to do was make it multi-plat. Motion controls weren't necessary for that game.

Next thing you forget - Some devs have the preconception that Wii games must have motion controls implemented.

 Many companies were under the wrong impression that, if they made games for the Wii, they needed to make use of motion controls. Damn, they couldn't be more wrong. It's a video game platform for Pete sakes. It plays GAMES. Surprise! But to be totally honest, I get the feel that Nintendo's 3rd-party relations are to blame for this. My guess is, Nintendo did some door to door and were hyping the nuts out of motion controls. The dev was left thinking that was the only way to go for making games on it, for trad controls, go HD twins. You KNOW how ppl can be stupidly sheepish at times.

Bud, you didn't read the wikipedia article, did you? :)  

2nd paragraph of this PS3 section: The breadth of ordinarily Sony exclusives, and you bring up one example of, what, a puzzle game (Portal 2)? Get serious. :P j/k haha. Okay, here's the segment of the article:

I think you get my drift ;)