Third-party developers can be successful on Nintendo systems with large install bases -- clearly nobody begrudged the presence of first-party titles during the NES and SNES era. The N64 and Gamecube suffered from a lot of poor third-party titles (remember the endless wrestling game iterations on N64?) and Nintendo's quality efforts ended up dominating the charts on those platforms. Nintendo understands the Wii and put its faith in it before anyone else even knew what they were up to -- and their software releases right now show the results of that investment. Third parties are working to catch up at the moment, but Sega, EA, Ubisoft, Activision and Atlus all have successes to show for their effort. I still maintain that the bigger the install base, the better for third parties in the long run... to be mercenary about it, a mediocre game can still sell enough to be profitable, and the blockbusters will TRULY be blockbusters. Whereas on a struggling platform, the expectation is that your game will be so great people will buy the system just to play it. At least that has to be the goal if you spent too much on development and still hope to make a profit on the investment.
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