If developers "Refuse" to make games for platforms which are not among the most powerful systems on the market how does the Nintendo DS, PSP and PS2 continue to get so much support?
Certainly, there are some developers who have found their place in the market by pushing the limits of the newest and most powerful hardware and they will ignore the Wii because it doesn't fit into their market strategy. The thing people don't seem to realize is that these developers are a tiny minority which do not represent the industry on the whole. We end up hearing a lot from these developers/designers because a lot of them are in the elite-handful of developers who consistently sell more than 2.5 Million copies of games.
Most developers require funding from publishers in order to pay for the development costs of their games, and this generally means that they have to pitch a game idea to the publishers that the publishers are interested in. Now, many/most of these developers can (realistically) only receive so much funding from publishers because their games would not be expected to sell that well; a game that sells 500,000 to 1,000,000 copies for these developers would be considered a smashing success for the most part. If you're able to get $5,000,000 from a publisher you have the funding to make a great "de Blob" or "Boom Blox" for the Wii, a pretty mediocre "Halo" or "Doom" game for the Wii, or a pretty shitty "Dora the Explorer" game for the XBox 360 or PS3. Now, there will be developers who take each choice, but do you think that the developers who dreamed of producing a "Halo" or "Doom" will choose to make licenced-shovelware for the HD consoles simply because the system is more powerful?
