I figured out why 3rd parties hesitate to put their best teams on Wii games

[Bodhesatva]

A lot of this strikes me as fluff, Rol, and pretty circuitous.

However, the core idea does ring true to me: many game developers seem to be making games for each other and not for consumers.

The premiere example of this is the way the review industry works. We all know how much pressure these reviewers get from major publishers, yes? The best example is that Ubisoft no longer works (or worked) with EGM/1up because of their Assassin's Creed review. Sony also will not work with them on their sports titles. These companies strong arm the reviewers all the time.

And at the exact same time they are performing strong arm tactics, these companies are heavily relying on metacritic to judge their own games, often apparently offering bonuses to developers who get high review scores.

See the problem this? It's like a guy clapping himself on the back.  Guy A pushes Guy B to give him good marks, then the score Guy B gives Guy A gets Guy A a raise. Now that Guy A has more money, he can pressure Guy B harder to give him even better marks, and so forth. I'd like to call such a phenomenon a "circle jerk," because that really is an apt phrase for this situation, even if the phrase is more crude than I typically prefer. 

It's completely out of hand.