Nintendo means bad news for 3rd parties!

[Bodhesatva]

Shane said:
I wasn't comparing RE4 GCN to RE4 PS2. I was comparing RE4 to anything that came before it. Capcom took their biggest franchise and flushed it down the toilet by making it for the wrong platform. By the time they realized this mistake, it was too late, but they rectified it as best they could. Past, present, future, whatever. No difference. Nobody's had much luck on Nintendo platforms since the SNES days, and even then, many of them were chomping at the bit to see what they could do with a less restrictive Sega. No, not per system. Per title. The average PS3 third party game in Japan is selling more copies (64k) than the average Wii third party game (42k) (when factoring in the Wii games listed here, that figure drops to 34k). Per system, the numbers get a lot bleaker. If people are only buying Wii Play because of the controller, Nintendo's wasting their advertising dollars. This explanation doesn't cut it for me. Are some of the sales coming due to the controller? Yes, no doubt. Are all of them? No, plenty of people have played Wii Sports and liked it enough to pick up Wii Play, on top of the heavy marketing campaign. If people are stupid enough to not realize Wii Play is made by Nintendo, they shouldn't be allowed to play video games unsupervised. We've already been through how third party titles are rushing to make unimportant games with their third string teams, preferably porting PS2/PSP games (strangely enough, much of Nintendo's support is contingent upon the continuing success of two Sony platforms).

 Had you considered the possibility that "nobody has had much luck on Nintendo platforms since the SNES days" because Nintendo consoles have had a significantly smaller user base than Playstation? Again: considering the size of the userbase, both Rogue Squadron and Resident Evil sold quite well. Resident Evil sold better than many of the most important Nintendo franchises. However, because the system had 1/5th the installed base of PS2, this success was comparatively mild. 

Let's put this simply: you agree that 3rd parties did well on Nintendo systems during the NES and SNES days. Those were the days when Nintendo had the largest install base. 3rd party titles have sold less well since then (again, compared to PS1 or PS2 sales), while Nintendo has had a much smaller slice of the pie. Why is it not logical that, with Nintendo regaining the largest section of market share, that 3rd party titles would once again be highly profitable?

As it stands right now, several 3rd party companies developing exclusive games for the PS3 claim they are struggling to make a profit (source: http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3155564). I'm certainly not suggesting this is because Sony is a bad company that hates 3rd party developers. There is one, completely logical thread that ties these systems together: a comparatively small user base. Other systems such as 3D0, CD-i, and Neo-Geo all fall in to the same category: none recieved significant 3rd party support because their user bases were too small.

I repeat: this isn't a "3rd parties can't make money on Nintendo systems" problem, as the NES and SNES clearly show. It's a "3rd parties can't make money on small platforms" problem.