Moreover, after the NES dominated, third parties assumed the next Nintendo console would have a bigger base and they'd be able to compete with Nintendo by releasing better games from the start, establishing themselves as stronger brands. That ended up going to shit because of Sega's Genesis which lead the 16 bit market in the west into 1991-1992 but unless Apple releases a home console there is no reason to believe the third party plan from the NES to SNES transition won't actually work this time. The Nintendo device I think that will have trouble matching its predecessor is the 3DS, given the West is slowly adopting cellphone gaming as a method for playing games on the go. I don't know that there will be a 250m portable video game hw market for dedicated players this generation (DS is set to get to 170m or so and PSP is going to get to 80m or so).
Philosophically speaking, so long as Sony and Microsoft prevent any level of third party exclusives from manifesting on a rival device, Nintendo's content becomes the strongest exclusive content, and Nintendo hardware is the biggest. Wii pretty much owns entire genres this generation - party games, dancing, fitness. As of now there is no reason to avoid putting that kind of content on Super Wii even if Kinect / Move become sizable markets over the next year or two before Super Wii launches.
People are difficult to govern because they have too much knowledge.
When there are more laws, there are more criminals.
- Lao Tzu
