Which third party company is simply going to miss the Wii boat?

[RenegadePhantasm]

One issue is the way Nintendo advertised their console to developers. They informed developers that they had a console which was cheap to develop on and would take only a minor investment. So many companies spent only a minor investment on their games for the Wii. For many companies like EA and Ubisoft this meant creating a casual game division which produces cheap to develop titles like My Word Coach. These games probably do not require high sales to pay off the investment. I expect nearly every 3rd party developer will show this kind of support. The support most "gamers" are eager for is support through big-budget million-seller titles (Like say a full next-gen FPS). Very few companies have shown this kind of support. This may never change.

Some companies like Sega, Midway and Namco are making some efforts, but just have trouble making good games in general. EA and Ubisoft are both creating new IPs for Wii games, although never endowing them with a PS3-size budget(they probably never will). Square Enix enjoys producing spin-offs and milking their franchises. The Wii will obviously never recieve a numbered Final Fantasy, but Kingdom Hearts is quite likely. The Wii will have its Crystal Chronicle games and will be home to essentially all of the console-based spinoffs. So the Wii will have no shortage of Squeenix titles, just not the "hardcore" ones. It just comes down to developers seeing the Wii as an entirely different market, and not putting certain type of (big budget) games onto it.

Marvelous Entertainment I expect to be a full supporter of the Wii because it matches their products so well. They produce Harvest Moon and other cute anime-styled RPGs which don't have particularly showy graphics and aren't enormous budget titles. They seem to always migrate to the console with the largest installed base first the PS2, and DS and now the Wii. They never produce system-sellers but would produce a nice support of RPGs for the Wii.