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Gamerace on 18 June 2012
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There was a market for 'violent' games on Wii in 2007 and into 2008 but 3rd parties (like analysts and fans) wrote Wii off before it even came out. So Assassin's Creed and CoD4 weren't in development for Wii. 'Violent games that came out for Wii should reasonable well, usually a little less than 360 but better than PS3 - which is to be expected due to the size of the userbases at the time.

But even so, Wii's sales were less than to be expected by publishers as the Wii's userbase was bloated by 'casuals' who had no interest in such games. This new phenominom confused publishers. So while they experimented with ports and spin-offs, few real attempts were made. There's a reason for this. It takes two years to develop a real AAA title and the general belief (supported by analysts) was that Wii's audience would get bored of motion controls (gimmick) and lack of HD and move to HD systems.

I'm not sure people got bored of motion (except poorly implimented motion), but they did get bored of the lack of 'violent' games on Wii. Or having to play a SD, inferior version of said games (CoD) due to Wii's limited horsepower. So, yes, people ending up buying a 360/PS3 and let their Wii's 'collect dust'.

If we could revert time and if 3rd parties had any clue how big Wii would be in 2005/6 when those big, generation defining games started development, it would be interesting to see what would have happened.

If CoD4 and Assassin's Creed launched on Wii simultaneously and sold comparible to RE4, CoD3, Godfather, etc did on respective systems, then this whole generation might have played out differently.

Then again, Dead Rising, Assassin's Cread, CoD4, etc., utilized the power of the HD systems. Power Wii simply didn't have. Any Wii version would have been significantly graphically, online and to some extent gameplay impaired (even if the controls were superior on Wii). Where would people have gone? I suspect Wii would have supported that market much better, for longer in this situation but Move would have seriously damaged Wii. Then people wouldn't have to choose, they could have both superior control and graphics/online.

Nintendo made a hard decision to not compete with MS/Sony in power/online/graphics. In the short term it served them very VERY well. In the long term, it's bitten them in the arse, HARD.