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Ian on 22 June 2008
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I agree with many of the things this poster has said but there's one thing that wasn't really addressed that seems like a huge factor.

As a platform holder Nintendo dictates the marketing for the Wii it'self, and they tightly control the direction of the marketing in such a way as to maximize sales of Nintendo made software. Specifically, Nindendo almost exclusively makes family freindly, pastel, E rated games, and markets their systems to help sell this kind of thing.

For this reason for example; you will never see them advertize the Wii to audences that prefer Fatal Frame over Mariokart; and the install base will show this. You will never see a mature Konami made game bundled with a Nintendo system; like Metalgear for example. And any developer who makes any type of game that is outside of Nintendo's branding is pretty much on their own marketing wise (it's an uphill battle going against the intall base of a system.)

Making matters worse is that, as mentioned, any game made similar to Nintendo's offerings gets to compete with a high quality Nintendo made game with Mario on the Box.




That said, the defenition of third party success with Wii is very different than the more conventional cross platform model used to make money on the PS3 and 360 (bigger but more conservative betting going on there).

Specifically, due to the low cost of development for Wii, a big company like Ubisoft can make a ton of games, have most of them flop, have a hit or two out of the bunch, and walk away with a profit. It's like spreading out your bets. All you have to do is hit one of them for the Jackpot. And the stakes are reduced because even if you sell a moderate amount you might make back the development costs or make a small profit and get to keep playing.


If PS3, Microsoft, and Nintendo were gambling games for third party developers to play on, PS3 and 360 would be high stakes Poker or Black Jack and Nintendo would be a slot machine or rulette weel.

For this reason I don't see companies placing big bets on a system when they have a better chance of making money just throwing a few dollars in quarters at it.