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

[theRepublic]

Squilliam said:
You can't look at the visible projects in general and point to them as utter failures or not profitable aside from a few exceptions. If you know about something its generally because its been successful.

Think about the games which don't get released, or get released to such a low fanfare that no-one cares about them. Those are the games which lose the money for the publishers.

Not true.

http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/news/only-four-percent-of-video-games-make-a-profit-ndash-eedar-/?biz=1

Only 20% of released video games make a profit.  If you include cancelled projects, then only 4% of video games are profitable.