In all fairness to third parties, Nintendo put them in a rather difficult position. By setting the processing power of the Wii so far below that of the competition, they made it difficult to financially and technically justify developing games for all three systems, and essentially left them with two options: Either develop exclusively for the Wii, or ignore one of the three systems at their peril. Third parties appear to have chosen the latter based on the performance of the GameCube, where Nintendo declined into near irrelevance in the eyes of the industry and gamers alike. If the Wii performed similarly to the GameCube, then the decision to dismiss Nintendo out of hand before the generation began would have worked out just fine.
Unfortunately for third parties, this generation worked out exactly the opposite way they had predicted. Suddenly, the choices changed to: Either backpedal and throw out all the investments made on developing HD assets (and convincing gamers that HD is a good thing) to follow the market leader, or ignore the market leader and suffer. I can't imagine it was an easy choice, as many third parties would have been screwed either way. In the end, it seems most third parties chose to stay the course, and justify their collective decision, no matter the cost. To that end, they declared war on the Wii, with the gaming media being a very willing accomplice.
Which brings us to today: Third parties ignore the market leader while simultaneously ascribing all their woes to it, the gaming media is collectively delivering a perspective of the market divorced from reality, the core hates the market leader, gamers that own the leading system are severely underserved, and everybody complains. Once the gaming media and the industry collectively declared war on the Wii, everybody in this generation lost.
Super World Cup Fighter II: Championship 2010 Edition
