Alright well Nintendo has always dominated its home platforms and has never actually lost to a third party on the home front as far as I know. But that has begun to change with the Wii and DS with development prices so cheap third parties can create games that look just as good as their first party counter parts.

EA,UbiSoft are the perfect examples, they have come close and actually I believe EA did beat out Nintendo during a month last year. Nintendo being the number one publisher on Nintendo built platforms has begun to become a little risky. With publishers like UbiSoft able to just churn out TouchGeneration titles from their Petz series and so fourth with EA's ability to do pretty much the same. Nintendo has become the target with all these publishers trying to take the top spot.

The newest challenger is expected by prominent analysts to replace EA as the worlds largest game publisher as well as the biggest threat to Nintendo as the number one publisher. Who is this big publisher, Activision Blizzard! With the Guitar Hero games coming to the Wii and Rockband from EAGames it would appear that Nintendo could get left out this year.

The fight between EA and Activision Blizzard is going to get very messy and Nintendo is going to be caught in the cross fire. With its own music based title expected this fall Nintendo has created a war machine that it itself can't tame.

Is Activision Blizzard, EA or UbiSoft going to have the man power to for the first time in history beat out Nintendo on its own platform? 

I wouldn't bet on it. That said, this sort of competition is exactly what Nintendo was aiming for in their own software line-up. They set the precedent for the kind of game you see on their platforms, and others follow along trying to one-up them. As the trend-setters, however, their software sales are inevitably higher than anybody else's, and will stay that way until somebody sets a trend ahead of Nintendo. EA, Activision/Blizzard, Ubisoft: these companies do not set trends so much as follow them. Guitar Hero was an exception to the rule, not the rule itself.

lol?

LOL!? ROFL!> omg! LOL!

*takes breath* *exhale*

Wow..

Let's see,

1. No @ Ubisoft as they haven't sold 1/3 of a particular game of the party genre as nintendo has in that particular games copies sold, same for touch.

2. No @ EA vs ActivisionBlizzard - what have they made the warrent such a notion on the Wii (Activision)?

3. No @ EA, they have other intentions, you'll have to wait till around E3 or after christmas to figure it out.

4. They will sell a lot but these products will not have an effect on Nintendo product sales - Nintendo owns mind share that they don't and would have to invest heavily and I mean heavily to take away. Like they say "Nintendo is the Disney of the gaming world" When you think gaming you think Play Station or Nintendo, not the other way around: Sony or Wii.

That was funny though good stuff, hadn't lol'd on this forum in a while... no one goes into cake vs pie battles here =( Guess they all know pie is better ;)

No one will ever beat Nintendo on their own system. Even EA realizes that it is impossible. It used to be EA's goal to be #1 publisher on all platforms. They realized the would never reach that goal so they modified it to being the #1 3rd party publisher on all platforms.

Until a publisher can push out the quantity AND quality that Nintendo does, they won't even come close on a consistent basis. They may come close once in a while, but not consistently.

In NA alone, (EA's strongest region) Nintendo has sold 24.3m copies of software this year. If we assume half are for the Wii, that leaves us with 12.15m units of software. EA, on the other hand, who is #2 publisher across all platforms in NA, has sold 13m units of software. Nintendo has sold only 1m units less on the Wii compare to EA on all 5 platforms. So EA has a long long way to go before they catch Nintendo, and any other company you pick is another 3m behind EA.

What exactly is "a little risky" here? That more games get sold on a platform that Nintendo makes money on? You seem to suggest that Nintendo risks not being the best publisher on their own machine. What exactly is the downside to them for that?

Umm companies like EAGames and Activision Blizzard can pump out almost as many games on an annual basis as Nintendo themselves. Now yes Nintendo has maintained dominance all this time but what about the threat being made by EA and Activision Blizzard.

What is the downside? If Activision Blizzard or EAGames were to take the top spot on Nintendo's platforms the next move would be people no longer buy Nintendo consoles for Nintendo's games. If Activision Blizzard or EA or UbiSoft managed to beat Nintendo out of the top spot, A.That means less software profits for Nintendo, B. many people could be turned to other platforms to get the latest Activision Blizzard game.

 If Nintendo lost the first place we would loose alot of Nintendo games. We could see major changes in the industry!

If a company like Ubisoft had management that was smart enough to ask the question "What kinds of games are lacking on the Wii, Nintendo DS, XBox 360 or PS3?" and then decided to bring high quality games like that they could probably challenge Nintendo; the problem is most large publishers seem entirely focused on producing low/moderate quality games in genres which are already over-represented on a platform.

Threat? Not until EA and ActBlizz can innovate and trailblaze like Nintendo does. (Read: Not grinding sequels into the ground)

" If Nintendo lost the first place we would loose alot of Nintendo games. We could see major changes in the industry! "

But, Nintendo spearheaded almost every single change in the industry. No one else has really changed the definition of "video game" the way Nintendo has.

And for the record, Activision had nothing to do with Guitar Hero's creation. Harmonix thought that up, and Activision merely published it until GH3.

EDIT: So you want to build a time machine, and have ActBlizz make the Wii before Nintendo does? 

It's not like Wii and DS games have magically ushered in the Era of making cheap games. The idea that Nintendo had was to keep development costs flat, or at least increase them in a linear fashion. It still costs more to make a good Wii game than a good PS2 game, for example, it just doesn't cost orders of magnitude more like the 360/PS3.

So, for example, it may cost 5 million to make a good Wii game. And 20 million to make a good 360/PS3 game (plus the cost of porting, if it is ported).

Hold on a second.  These publishers take top spot on Nintendo's platform and that drives people to other platforms?

Can I has non sequitur? Even if this were to happen, it would be because they use the platform better than Nintendo... and in that case their's no "other platform" alternative, is there?