Why do most third party publishers ignore the Wii completely ?

[Gamerace]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned that much of the Wii base that would be interested in those games are also owners of HD consoles and would either - buy the superior HD version instead, or a Wii version sale over a HD version would be a detriment to the developer because of the high cost of HD development.

There is a market on Wii for such games, but it's very small compared to that same market on HD consoles. Even the oft-mentioned CoDWaW or CoD:MWR only sell a fraction of what their HD counterparts due despite the Wii having a far larger install base.

The core market on Wii also tends to be the 'after market'. IE: The people that wait until the game becomes cheap before buying it. PC has a very large aftermarket as you can see by all the $5 and $10 games available like Myst and the original World of Warcraft/Diablo/Starcraft games still selling to this day. Dead Space:Extraction and likely RE:DC and Silent Hill will probably see a lot of their sales after price drops. Blazing Angels sold amazingly well on Wii but only at a budget price.

You can see how many games that didn't light up the charts (Spyborgs, Indiana Jones atSoK) at launch now immediately drop their price to $20 or less to attract the after market before getting squeezed off store shelves. This has become a sad reality that only encourages people to wait for price drops. Why am I going to pay $50 for Silent Hill of FF:CC:CB if they'll likely be $20 next month? I won't.

For these reasons, it makes little sense for any but the biggest brand name games (Star Wars / CoD) to do Wii ports.

Also, some games (fighters) aren't done justice by Wii controls. Some are made better by Wii controls and I'm still waiting for my GTA Wii which would be awesome, especially with local multiplayer.