Third parties pull a fast one and blame Nintendo for their own crappy games

[xerostomia]

@ookaze, I am not going to argue with you with information/numbers that I do not know. With regards to Madden, I personnally have not played any of the Wii Madden games, but on the Xbox 360, 2009 is better than 2008, which in turn is better on 2007 ( I have all of them including 2006). This is with regards to gameplay and AI as well as graphical upgrades. Unless they make a completely different game for Wii, I would think gameplay should be the same on the Wii. Many of my friends who have bought the Wii, and bought Madden 07 (they are big football fans, but casual gamers) have no interests in buying the newer version every year because a)they feel the core gameplay is the same year after year (and I totally agree), b)they don't play enough to warrent the newer versions. c)when they play with their kids, the kids don't care which version they play on. d)newer Wii owner friends buy the 07/08 version over the newer ones because they are significantly discounted. The bulk of Madden sales occur in the 1st few months of the season, with a possible bump comesuperbowl. Thus in 2 months, Madden 09 sales will be negligable. Madden 09 may catch/pass 07, but will not pass 08, despite a near doubling in the Wii userbase year over year.

With regards to 3rd party numbers. I do not know how to filter exclusives from the total numbers sold, but to get an estimate on sales, I looked at total software sales (almost 170 million Xbox vs ~190 million for Wii), but the more important number is attach rate of 7.4 for Xbox vs 5.1 for Wii (it makes no sense to look at absolute numbers because the userbase numbers are totally different, times are differnent, 3rd party games are different. Attach rate is the only way to tell how many games each individual console owner buys. One way to get an estimate of 3rd party sales is to look at the million sellers and get an estimate. Wii sold 139 million software in the million sellers, of which 131-132 are exclusive (and almost all are Nintendo). I will give you exclusive to the advantage of Wii because most exclusive titles on the Xbox are made by 3rd parties (Gears = Epic, etc). Thus that leaves us with 7-8 million software PLUS a %of the remaining 60 million that are 3rd party/multiplatform for the Wii.

On the Xbox side, 109 million software are million plus sellers, of which 12 games are exclusive which represents 35 million. Thus that leaves 70+ million that are multiplatfrom (vs 7 million for Wii). I will give the Wii full credit and say of the 60 million solftware left that were less than 1 million sold, 100% are 3rd party (that is not true, but for arguements sake lets say that). Then 67 million units of software with 37 million userbase = attach rate of 1.8. For the Xbox, I will do the same, we will assume 100% of the remaining 60 million are multiplatform. Thus 70+60 =130 million, with userbase of 23 million = attach rate of 5.65. Xbox owners support multiplatform titles 3 times as much as Wii owners at the VERY LEAST. My suspicion is that a greater percentage of the less than 1 million sellers for nintendo are Nintendo games anyways vs Xbox. This is my arguement for why I think Wii owners don;t support 3rd party developers.

Similarly what is Nintendo's excuse. PS2 owners supported 3rd party developers great and the Wii is a better console (hardware wise) than the PS2. The problem is that Wii owners look at what they can have on a Xbox/PS3 and then realize that it makes no sense to buy the same game on the Wii. This is not the fault of the developers, but the fault of Nintendo as Wii cannot run Gears or War, or Drakes, or rachet and Clank or MGS, or Forza 2 or Bioshock, or Mass Effect, etc, etc.. The Wii CAN run original Halo, or original Forza, or original MGS, but who wants to play those games on weak hardware in 2008? That is why Wii owners don't support multiplatform titles.