So, in the vain of trying to inspire some intellectual debate i'll try again with something all of us care about, MONEY!
Does the Wii being a profitable system from the get go, as opposed to PS3 or even XBox360, mean that Ninty essentially put themselves behind the eight ball to start with in terms of further developing the console and unlocking it's full potential? Since it is profitable, then the number of consoles they need to move to make an overall profit is less. Thus if the system doesn't perform well then it's not a really big deal. This makes good business sense as it minimises risk financially speaking. However, the manufacturers efforts in terms of developer support, add-ons, etc, now don't have the same driving incentive as does a manufacturer who isn't making a profit on their system and needs to make their dev tools brilliant, their games always good sellers and their add-ons must have items in order to turn good profits. In other words they need to make focused and consistent efforts on squeezing the most out of their systems, which in a general sense makes their console and the games on it alround more appealing to the mass market. I feel this is an area which Ninty has lacked and Sony has excelled in (DVD remote, network adapters, HDD + Linux, Multi-tap, light guns, solid dev tools (compared to launch dev tools, etc) and has in past contributed to some of the gap between Gamecube/PS2 and N64/PS. I know i would have gotten the N64 modem or N64 CD Drive if they had ever have followed through with those projects, and i feel the N64 would have not seen as large a gap between it and the PS.
My main reason for saying this is that the Wii has huge potential in what it can achieve, so long as Ninty maintain a focussed effort on it for 75% of it's life. This effort could be support to devs, firmware upgrades, USB add-ons, new channels, DS interactivity. So far things look promising, but historically speaking i don't think Ninty do as good a job at unlocking their systems potential as do other companies (DS for example could be the ideal system for a MP3 player game card and GBA card with SD card memory for storage, or with an Organiser application, and i don't think the microphone has had it's potential fully unlocked, nor the WiFi functionality) and i feel some of this comes down to the fact that Ninty just don't need to focus their efforts on stuff like this because they have already turned a significant profit from minimal sales. NES was the only system that really explored its potential with things like the powerglove, R.O.B the robot, 3D Fx chips in the carts etc, but it was limited in how far it could go.
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