Are third parties morons or are their actions deliberate?

[Doobie_wop]

Why should Third Parties make a serious effort on a system when even the platform leader isn't even trying? You can say whatever you want, but Nintendo came into this generation with one purpose, to take the kids and soccer mum market. All their ads, games and PR from the first two years of this generation have been dedicated to that specific market and then when a Third Party Effort is made it bombs because the market they want just isn't there. Third Parties followed in Nintendo's footsteps, release what the market wants and that market is mostly young children, middle aged women and older people, I highly doubt any of them want to play Fallout 3.

Nintendo should also make a legitimate effort to partner with Third Parties, Sony & Microsoft busted their balls this gen to make deals with Third Parties and in the end most of those deals paid off. If Sony can start the generation with one of weakest software line-ups and then turn that around in just a couple of years, then I think Nintendo can do the same.

You brought up other genres like FPS/TPS/Sandbox/RPG etc. If Nintendo's own FPS (Metroid Prime 3) can only sell 1.56 million copies, then what do you expect other first party developers to do? What foundations do they have to work on? Activision are now trying to make a legitimate effort, but I bet that when Goldeneye and Black Ops release Nintendo fans are going to kick up a fuss about something (crap online, game looks ugly etc). 

Nintendo have built a crap console, the online support is rubbish, the Wiiware service is rubbish, the motion controls barely worked for the first two years of release outside of some waggling fun and developers have to take on all those problems and then try make a game for a userbase that isn't there.

The conspiracy theories that are coming up in this thread are ridiculous, the Third Party situation is partly Nintendo's fault as well as the fault of other publishers. The only thing Nintendo can offer now is cheaper development, the PS3/360 has everything else such as the userbase, the audience, the ease of cross platform development, the online infrastructure and a history of buying the games that developers enjoy making.