Nintendo, Third Parties: What's it gonna take?

[Gamerace]

I think Nintendo has already done it. By becoming a disruptive competitor they are marginalizing the competition. MS is fighting that marginalization while Sony seems to be sleepwalking further into it, looking to out-core the 360.

Assuming Nintendo can maintain their momentum (something that's now slightly in doubt after the misstep of AC:CF and Wii Music) they will grow their new audience to double or more the size of the competition. With a development cost at 1/4 to 1/3 that of the HD twins it'll make developing for Wii an almost sure thing profit-wise while the HD systems become an ever greater gamble as that market always wants more - more graphics, more features, more complexity, more expensive development. After all a sequal can never be the same but different, it must always be perceived as better as well.

The old market design has run it's course and is now dying. 3rd parties are struggling to make profits off of the old model (alone), most are continually in the red. They will either adapt to the new paradigm, die off or become a niche market supplier.

The traditional model is dying because of two main factors: the development cost vs profit margin of HD development - and development for the 14-24 male sector in general - and the used game market / piracy.
Nintendo suffers from neither problem as their development costs are totally in line with profitability (even on unsuccessful games - you have to bomb pretty hard to not at least break even on Wii/DS) and Nintendo games and the more casual games are no where nearly as frequent on Used shelves nor does their market tend to pirate games (even though it's brain-dead easy on DS).

Nintendo had the foresight (they had to) to see where the market was heading and sidestep it. They risked everything but realized everything was already at risk if they just stayed with the status quo anyway.

Now it's a misnomer to say Nintendo or Wii don't have 3rd party support since Wii (and DS) have far more games made for it then the HD systems do. It's just a quality judgment and largely, a question of 'core' games - IE that 14-24 male market. Quality is coming and will continue as 3rd parties realize that they need to step it up to be truly successful on Wii. THQ is right - Nintendo is the only competition that matters and you have to have comparible quality if you ever hope to see comparible results. As for 'core' games; Those may never come. We may get more M titles that are aimed at 30+ market like Sega is doing but the classic 'core' market is too spoiled to accept a mass market machine. They'll keep one or both HD systems alive or, should they fall, goto PCs (again).