I think the Wii's design was driven in large part by a desire to maintain backward compatibility with the Gamecube, not just for consumers but for developers. Nintendo could not have been operating under the assumption that the Wii would take off to the extent it has; my guess is they targeted third parties by offering them ease of transition to the next generation. If they had been able to predict the system's level of success, they might have made less conservative choices in that area. But even Nintendo needs third party support -- they opted to do their best not to LOSE the developers who had already invested in the Gamecube, and I think that was the best possible choice at the time. Some of the third-party titles on the market now were clearly rushed, or are the product of developers without much Gamecube experience to assist them in the transition. I think there are major challenges to dealing with the human variation inherent to interpreting the Wiimote, and that's where a lot of "invisible" effort is going right now. Hopefully third parties are now committing more resources to their Wii titles -- recent announcements are encouraging, we're seeing more variety and some potentially epic games on the way.
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