umm. yes they can and they HAVE.

Even if your still talking About sales .

Grandtheft Auto is the 8th best selling video game franchise at 70 million

the Sim's is the 4th best selling video game franchise franchise at 125 million

can you guess which has the first?

Nintendo with Mario which is 222 million

so don't give me that 3rd party cannot be in the top 10

and to boot:

The Sims 3 was recently revealed to be the best-selling PC game in 2009 worldwide - more than 4.5 million units sold - and it was also the #1 selling iPhone game last year.

Eh, you realize it's technically impossible for a PC game to be "3rd party" right?  I mean unless it runs under someone else's subplatform (Steam, GFW, etc)... you can't be "3rd party" on an open format. ;)

And even still, here you have to resort to total franchises (the classification of which can be hugely debatable in itself).  What are the top 10 games?  How many are "3rd party"?  If no 3rd party can crack the top 10, why be a 3rd party at all?  If you can't compete with Nintendo, why make games at all?

well that's if for me, I'm out of this thread seem's like it's everyone else's fault except Nintendo..gotcha, 

enjoy the Wii.

I'm done with the argument we agree to disagree

Sorry no, there's no agree to disagree here.  My standpoint is you're wrong; your arguments have been chiefly circular effect as causation strawmen, you can't seem to actually define between 1st and 3rd party, you continually fail to cite relevant cases or examples, and your ranking argument inherently works against itself logically once you replace "Wii" with "videogames".  There's plenty of "fault" to go around on the Wii 3rd party malaise, both to Nintendo and 3rd parties, and frankly I've never said otherwise.

What we can agree on is this isn't getting anywhere and that yes, you should probably just leave the thread while the getting's good.

I wasn't aware that you liked dating sims and love adventure games that much tres. that's amazing. yeah, the 360 and PS3 are flooded with that shit in Japan, no thanks I say.

Anyway back on topic, people may put up a list for 360/PS3 but ironically it's Nintendo's platforms who have the most relevant titles in DQX for the Wii and Ninokuni for the DS which will be huge. We're all not expecting huge numbers of third party titles and tbh the Wii has gotten much more then I thought it would when I bought it on launch, it may not have the same amount as HD consoles but imo the first party effort this gen has been the best I've seen from Nintendo and games like DQX, MH3, RS2, TVC, NMH, Silent Hill and so on are nice bonuses on top of the first parties I originally bought the Wii for.

428 sold 120k on the Wii.............20k on the PS3 and 40k on the PSP.

Muramasa sold 200k+ at a decent price as well (has it dropped below $30 yet?) How was this game supposed to take off anyways? European retailers wouldn't even stock it. Even though it wasn't a Just Dance level hit, it made money.

From my experience, whenever Wii gets a drought like this it is usually broken by a huge 3rd party announcement followed by a bunch of small games.

@wydrness hold your horse "relevant" is in the eyes of the beholder, i and a bunch of people could give a damn about Dragon Quest and I never even heard of whatever DS game your talking about. the upcoming Halo, GT5 and Modnation are "relevant" to me so lets not throw that word around.
on the subject, this is common sense. 3rd party had stopped because their not getting the sucess they want on Wii or not the sucess that they enjoy on the HDs. pick one as to who's fault? who the hell knows. Oh and before I get jumped for being an HD fanboy, I've owned Wii for almost 2 years and bought about 10 games only one of those games were Nintendo made (Smash Bros.) I support 3rd parties, if everyone could get of off Mario's cock for just a few minutes and try something else we would not have threads like this. (not knocking the Big N)

I have the Wii too but i can assure you i have not once been on Mario's cock.... :0