Most of the major third party publishers knew about the Wii before it was initially displayed at TGS 2005, and today (3 years after that event) some of these major third party publishers continue to doubt its long term prospects because it is not as technically advanced as the HD consoles.
In the 1990s there was a movement within the industry where most of the executive positions in major publishers and developers was being filled by former movie and music executives because they had more experience dealing with the large project budgets and marketing budgets that publishers were facing. As a result of that, few executives in companies are former game developers and/or have a particular interest in videogames; the exception of this is Nintendo which is the only major publisher in the world to have a CEO who was a game designer. Most of these executives have followed the same pattern to success of improving the graphics of a game, hyping the technical details, and using large marketing budgets to get the game into the consumer's hands. These executives do not (and can not) understand why the Wii is successful and no additional lead time would have made them more likely to support the system
