@bdbdbd:
I'm not trying to say that Nintendo has no grounds for saying the 3rd parties should pay attention to the Wii. The Wii is immensely popular -- that alone makes it viable for 3rd party development. There are a number of reasons why the Wii is currently unattractive, for 3rd party investment dollars, and a number of reasons why it is attractive. Namely...
Reasons not to develop on the Wii:
* Wii games can't be ported as easily to the other platforms, or the PC, and still be respected as a quality title, and up-porting is always more expensive than down-porting. Portability of a game is a huge factor in its ability to turn a profit, because it expands the available audience at a relatively low cost.
* The Wii audience, although larger than any other individual platform, is less targetable, in terms of demographics, and individual games have performed below expectations in the past. This is the primary reason 3rd party Wii games have performed so poorly, in my opinion. The Wiis sheer numbers have saved it from this "general audience" demographic scatter, but only barely. I believe that Nintendo actually *needs* 50% marketshare to overcome this obstacle to 3rd party profit performance on the Wii.
* The Wii is the oddball, in terms of development, whereas the X360, PS3, and PC all share something of a common ground, in terms of general capability. The Wiis numbers may exceed the X360, or the PS3, but it doesn't exceed X360 + PS3 (yet), and it certainly comes nowhere near to exceeding X360+PS3+PC, and never will. The X360s greatest advantage, from a 3rd party perspective, is that it is very similar to the PC. The Wii can never hold this title, and PS3 games only make it there if they are also crossplatform on the X360.
* The Wii's online marketplace is weak, relative to its competitors, and online play on the Wii is weak, relative to its competitors. Nintendo has stated that they have no plans to improve it.
Reasons to develop on the Wii:
* Wii numbers are large, and showing no signs of slowing down. If it achieves 50% marketshare, the tables will likely turn on investment returns per title.
* The Wii has a low barrier for new developers. It is easy and cheap to develop on, and a creative developer has a great deal of potential, from a market perspective.
* Due to the low barrier for new titles, risk is less, and online capability is less important. Inevitably, a low risk entry allows the largest quantity of new IPs to emerge, and this helps *hugely* with hardware sales, which, in turn, affect software sales.
