Nintendo consoles have not been the platform of choice for third party support since the SNES, but a lot of arguments can be made about how well they've done at attracting third party support since then.
N64
Pros: Supported by Midway, Acclaim, THQ, Ubisoft, and Konami. Gems included Turok, Rayman 2, Harvest Moon 64, Space Station Silicon Valley, Wipeout 64, THQ's wrestling games, and licensed sports games from an era where EA had to share with Midway and Acclaim. There were also decent ports of games like Resident Evil 2 and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. Many latter releases took advantage of the RAM expansion add-on, though no third party games required it. Note that this does not count the efforts of Rare or other devs with Nintendo as a publisher.
Cons: Only about 330 third party games were released on N64, including about 80 Japanese exclusives. Multi-platform games often suffered in transition to N64, and most of the PlayStation's biggest hits never made this leap. Few if any of the N64's highlights were not published by Nintendo and/or developed by Rare.
GameCube
Pros: Had roughly twice as many games from third parties as the N64. Saw solid support from Activision, EA, Sega, THQ, and Ubisoft. Certain 3rd party games were among the best games on the platform, including Resident Evil 4, Soul Calibur 2, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, Viewtiful Joe, REmake, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, and Super Monkey Ball. Third party exclusives included Rogue Squadron 2 and Baten Kaitos.
Cons: Few of the third party hits on GameCube were exclusive for any significant period of time. Even games like Super Monkey Ball 2, though technically exclusive, would be repackaged for other platforms (Super Monkey Ball Deluxe). Many major games did nnot get a GameCube release, even when released for both PlayStation 2 and Xbox.
Wii
Pros: More titles released than any other Nintendo console. Had many games from Activision, Capcom, Sega, and Ubisoft. Critical hits included the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games, Boom Blox, Tatsunoko vs Capcom, Monster Hunter Tri, No More Heroes, and various others, many of which were exclusive. Series like Just Dance and Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games were among the best-selling third party games to ever be released on a Nintendo console. WiiWare, despite a mixed record, brought games like Mega Man 9, World of Goo, Fluidity, and Bit Trip.
Cons: Only a handful of third party AAA games ever released, exclusive or not. This includes the multiplatform games of the GameCube era, such as Prince of Persia. Many of the retail Wii exclusives, though well received, were less well received than other games of their genre and era (MadWorld was no Bayonetta for example). Shovelware was notoriously common.
Wii U
Pros: Had a number of decent big budget multiplatform releases in its early life, including Rayman Legends, Need for Speed, Arkham City, and Assassin's Creed 4. Even after this early wave of ports, games like Minecraft, Skylanders, and LEGO were released. Had a handful of notable exclusives, including ZombiU, Tokyo Mirage Sessions, and LEGO City. Greatly benefitted from the eShop, with about 500 download-only games, largely from indie devs, released in at least one region. Highlights included Shovel Knight, Guacamelee, Shantae, and Fast Racing Neo.
Cons: Only about 150 third party retail games ever released, about half the N64's lineup. Retail releases came at a trickle's pace especially after 2014 (Only ten for North America in 2016 for example). Though the eShop offered far greater indie support than anything the Wii had to offer, whether it matched or exceeded services on other platforms is debatable.
My Opinion
- GameCube - Had the best compromise between a fairly high quantity and quality of releases. The relatively scarce exclusives was insignificant compared to those factors.
- Wii AND Wii U - Despite being very different consoles, one can say that the smaller retail games of the Wii are roughly equivalent to the higher end eShop titles of the Wii U eShop. Besides that, they both have a few more significant big budget titles to fill out the library. Cutting out the shovelware, it's surprisingly close.
- N64 - Simply had very little going for it in any one category. This is at least partially due to how Nintendo went out of their way to publish many games during this era, but even taking that into account, there were simply only a few games that lacked quality or exclusivity.
Love and tolerate.
