Wow, that's a good point... Will there be enough players? I mean, for the start of the gen no way. Will it change the further we go? It looks like a lot of Wii people may pick up the PSONE though but how many can't be guaranteed. The casual/core user base line on the Wii is unknown really...

I'm incredibly certain devs would have wanted a stronger machine, I think the power is what they're refering to mostly. 

Looking at the sales of the Wii the core base was extremely small, but because of the size of the marketshare first party sold better. Third parties lost out worse than ever.

Core games that were well made and not highly limited in appeal did well on Wii; Monster Hunter Tri, COD World at War /Modern Warfare/Black Ops, Goldeneye 007, Resident Evil 4/Umbrella Chronicles/Darkside Chronicles.

The audience didn't tolerate half-assed "test" games like Dead Space Extraction, that's all.

It's hard to argue against those points.

The fact is Sony/MS pretty much from day 1 go to third parties and ask them what they want. Nintendo gets a little input here and there, but generally makes their machines for EAD and what they think is good (ie: no third party in their right mind asked for a 33 watt console that holds the machine back to about PS3/360 performance).

Nintendo just always has to be the special snowflake that's different, and it gets tiring for developers to have to jump through extra hoops for them.

Is it really bullshit?

The Wii U is 

1. Not powerful. People seem to be labouring under the illusion that developers like working with weak hardware, trying to draw perfomance from it like blood from a stone. Its actaully very counter productive and the only reason why they still release games for the ps3/360 because they need to in order to turn the profit. I'm sure many of them would like to see better tech inside the PS4/X1 aswell, but its the best they're going to get so they'll roll with it.

2.Wii U has a tiny audience, so it doesn't benefit from the userbase arguement the PS3/360 do.

I have enjoyed Skyrim for the most part, even though it's myriad of glitches and bugs really do piss me off. But even so I would still say it is a highly overrated game that people were kind or ridiculous to drool over so much upon it's release. IF Elder Scrolls 6 were an improvement over Skyrim, but retained the same basic gameplay (with some obvious improvements), I would be interested in it. And it would be great to get that on Wii U. But if not, oh well, it's not going to break my heart.

As for Gearbox? Yeah............fuck them. The ONLY thing they've ever worked on that I had even the slightest interest in, was Aliens: Colonial Marines, which I was at least somewhat enthusiastic for and looking forward to the Wii U version, then the game comes out on other consoles, apparently is an unfinished, unpolished piece of garbage, and the Wii U version gets cancelled. So fuck Gearbox. Both companies are honestly PC developers that just aren't very good at home console development.

All of the call of duties sold on the Wii dont even amount to one sold on one of the HD twins. Thats how badly COD sells on a Nintendo platform with a majorly casual community. Monster Hunter is made for that audience, think Pokemon...just more mature. Your standards for sales are low for Resident Evil, especially on a platform that sold 100 million. The original Playstation sold a little over that over the Wii in Sonys first year in gaming and the first Resident Evil sold more than all of the Resident Evil games released on the Wii.

The audience was comprised of mostly non-gamers. The true gamers were extremely minor. This is what people found out about the Wii.

Sales over a million per game, over 2 million in cases, are good (and profitable) sales, you cannot achieve such numbers a "tiny" core userbase. If the "true gamers" were really "extremely minor" they would have sold 200k a pop.

NO console developer made their systems while consulting any third party development studio in the past. Not Microsoft, not Sony, not Nintendo, not anyone. This is the first generation any of them have ever truly done so, and for the record, Nintendo did in fact do so at least a bit, which is why you see the console have more traditional controls, why has a MUCH better online structure, why they are really bending over backwards to work with indie developers, and why, even though it's not "on par" with the PS4, the console (still) has fairly powerful HD hardware to work with. Sure, at the end of the day, Nintendo "did their own thing", and honestly good for them. If I wanted a home console that acted like a PC, I'd just play my PC. But Nintendo worked with third parties very heavily early on. The support was there, as seen in their launch. It is simply the fact that third party support dropped off quite a bit after the months-long drought, which is a double edged sword. Some companies like EA claim that Nintendo needs to sell the system better with their own games, before they bring back strong support. And yet, the argument can also absolutely be made that the Wii U software drought wouldn't have been nearly as bad, if for example EA had a game or two that released in the first half of the year, or if Ubisoft had not gone mental and still released Rayman Legends in Feb. like they were supposed to, etc.

It really does work both ways. Yes, Nintendo does need to get their own games out there to sell their own system. But on the other hand, if third party devs would support Wii U more strongly with games like Resident Evil, Madden, WWE, Battlefield, GTA, etc., it would help the console to look all the more attractive to potential buyers. It has never been the case that third party games aren't important on Nintendo consoles. It's just that Nintendo themselves make such good games (usually) that they are always the "main attraction" on their systems. Then again, on some level you could argue that exclusives on ANY console are the main attraction. Nintendo is finally getting the "big guns" rolling out to help their console sell, and the price drop and Zelda bundle will help immensely. But more companies need to step up like Ubisoft or Warner Bros., and still offer strong support to the console, to offer a larger, more varied amount of software for potential Wii U buyers to have available to them. Like I said, it works both ways.