A friend and I discussed this some time ago (we're both small indie developers.. on PC) aboutthe current third partry situation on the Wii. Normally the most logical reason is to go to the platform with the biggest install base tincrease your chances to sell your game and have a profit and growth from it. Bust most western developers, specially the most known ones, are not providing strong support as they should. Most of the statemenst to the press are pure BS or window dressing that hides the reality inside the company. And no, I am not like Mastrom with the anti-wii thing. My friend and I tought about many factors that may help explain the issue.
1. The notion of games competing with the movie industry in the future
Under this notion, development of HD games makes sense. Many developers, journalist, and analyst pointed this direction as the "next step" in gaming. Some of you may agree with this, others (like me and my friend) do not. HD graphics give a sense of "closing the gap" between games and movies and becomes attractive to many companies. PD/PS3 and Xbox360 both have the power to help companies in this direction, so they put out their best resources (A teams) to take the lead or at least a good part in this "new era".
The Nintendo Wii, on the other hand, is against this notion completely. Wii wants games that challenges games, not movies. So naturally, at the begining, developers didn't put much attention. But now with the biggest install base on one platform, the attention changed to get some money our of this new market with little effort. This creates shovelware, sub par ports, or games that with Z.
2. The well developed, flawed perspective problem
this was to explain many of the commom "flops" that goes around many games from big developers /publishers that actually gave some "effort", but sell poorly. It's not that the games are bad, but because the game was missdirected from the start.
