With the Atari crash, you had the major games of two consecutive holiday seasons from Atari themselves being absolute duds. Not "I guess kids could have fun with that" duds like Wii Music, but "this is practically unplayable" duds like Pac-Man and E.T. I think we can stop invoking the Atari crash.
It IS pretty amazing that Carnival Games, Game Party, Deca Sports and Big Beach Sports look like they're ALL going to sell 1M copies. And Sports Party and Game Party 2 could too. And MP8 and M&S are both going to sell 6M+. But if companies assume that the demands of this new audience aren't going to increase, flooding the new low-end market instead of building the new high-end, their sales are going to drop dramatically. Games like Wii Fit and Mario Kart, and next year, Wii Sports Resort, which expand on the values of Wii Sports and Play instead of just echoing them, are and will be many times more successful.
"[Our former customers] are unable to find software which they WANT to play."
"The way to solve this problem lies in how to communicate what kind of games [they CAN play]."
Satoru Iwata, Nintendo President. Only slightly paraphrased.
