It isn't really abandoning its consumers, the fact is the Wii as a hardware device doesn't intirgue enough developers to sustain another year or two. At least in Japan.
Outside of Mario and Wii branded releases, Nintendo has struggled to sell anything in Japan on the system and only Capcom and maybe a handful of others have as well. Pretty sure that MH Tri is the onlyl 3rd party game in game to get over 400k, excluding Mario and Sonic collaborations for the system. Which is crazy considering until last year it was the market leader.Part of the problem there is that Nintendo while creating the casual market in this current generation, is having a hard time replicating that success with new games that don't have a accessory packed in. Thus they are returning to try to grab the original audience tehy built up with traditional gamers.
And it isn't like Nintendo and others have not tried, Nintendo just dropped more then a few attempts to create the casual buzz that came with Wii Sports and other games and the traditional gamer as well like with one of the most polished RPGs of the generation a few months ago and before that returns of both Metriod and Punch Out. The thing is while they can cost in NA and other territories, they were bombing out with the Wii in there own backyard and the Japanese developers were their best hope as most western studios and publishers only dropped downgraded ports on the system.
With the DS, it was pretty much time to advance to the 3DS with the PSP becoming a viable threat again (in Japan at least), Cafe is pretty much in that same mold. Both the developers and the paying consumers are saying they want more and both the DS and Wii can only do so much, so Nintendo is giving it to them, with the hope that they can still find something new to grab the casual gamers' and the imaginative developers' eye.
