http://www.gamerdad.com/detail.cfm?itemID=2355 

"Resident Evil is one of the controversial classics that's appeared in newspapers, op-eds, and the speeches of Senators and even in the official opinions of Judges (where one hilariously referred to the series as "The Resident of Evil Creek"). And admittedly the series has been ground-breaking and frightening enough to generate a 2nd rate movie, a 3rd rate sequel to that movie, and a console game franchise that's actually much longer than the 4 in Resident Evil 4 implies."

Certainly, Resident Evil never generated the Press that Mortal Kombat and Grand Theft Auto did but that is largely because it only pushed the boundry of acceptance that Doom created rather than breaking a boundry like GTA and Mortal Kombat did.

I've got to say it could go either way!

We know on a global scale Nintendo is well know to parents who grew up playing the Nintendo games. These parents do what - Buy the consoles for their children and trust in Nintendo's brand quality. Infact Nintendo is so well known for its family friendly software that almost anything provokes a public outcry. Remember when CNN reported a gil was talked to by a stranger who asked hesome personal things over DS Pictochat he had to have been within feet of her yet their was a public outcry. The Wii launches the Opera browser and right aways a group of angry Christian Parent's boycott Wii claiming it is a Portal of Porn when their are child locks and Wii can't even play .Mov or any other media files except Flash. Infact the kid would have to accidentaly come across a porn site that just happened to be entirely in Flash and accidently enter his age as 18 or older and then accidently click on a clip. The amount of accidents that would have to take place is amazin. Yet parents were outraged that it was even possible, all it takes is a parent to actually watch where their kids are online!

We know theirs bound to be a huge backlash of families abandoning Wii but is it financially viable for them too? A family buying a console for their kids isn't always gonna want to dish out 699CDN or 499CDN for a single console. The option of 279CDN for a console and games is far more appealing. Low/Medium income households will be pushed towards Wii regardless of their moral objections this could give Nintendo a grace period where they can get away with M games without damaging their user base too much. Keeping damages minimal theirs a chance M games could benefit!

 Right now Nintendo is known for family friendly entertainment. However the inclusion of numerous M rated titles could boost its support of the older age demographics such as 20-35 year old males as well as the gore crazy teenagers. That can help Nintendo largely in the short term with millions of units possibly sold because of the inclusion of such titles. It also makes the console more for everyone and gives adults something to play when their kids are out this could benefit Nintendo in less conservative countries or (States/Provinces)!

In the end its a question of short term gains (M titles) over long term losses (Family user base)! 

Bad news is always better than no news, & Nintendo could easily shift blame onto EA. As it was their "implementation" of the motion based controls that would cause such a controversy, EA would catch the backlash. As Take-Two did, & not Sony themselves. That's why games are rated regardless.

edit: Alacrist, Manhunt was the most violent console game released last-gen.

 Actually it's very arbitrary, you and the US as a whole might have a specific definition for it, but that doesn't mean it also applies to other countries. For instance the US seems to have more problems with nudity/sex (hot coffee incident), yet have far less problems with violence (take the gunlaws in the US as an example).

You don't need to quote the whole previous discussion, it's useless and lengthens the page to a point when the browsing gets dull. Wii has parental control settings, so it's up to the parents to decide which games they let the kids play. There's no way anyone can blame Nintendo for kids playing too violent games because of the parental control and the age restrictions made independently by ESRB.

Mortal Kombat 2 didn't hurt the SNES in 1994 and mature titles won't hurt the Wii in 2007.

While there's bound to be a few nut jobs out there (*cough*Jack Thompson*cough*), most people recognize that they have a choice when it comes to the games they want to play.  Sure, there are a few parents out there that don't want to take responsibility for raising their kids properly, but the majority do try.  I think a good range of games will help in the long run and look forward to quality mature titles.  

US has so liberal gunlaws, so that you cant really compare statistics between countries that has more strict laws. For example, from a European (at least countries with a better welfare) point of view, US has much bigger problems with violence. You could say, that only Germany in Europe is opposing game violence, propably because of the small gaming audience compared to population. Most of the countries think that game violence is ok, if violent games are not sold to too young people. Because of people like Jack Thompson, public convensation about violence in games will not work. In Finland this conversation is getting in to right track again. Few years ago some instances tried to blame even the gaming media, propably for it to lose its credibility among people, but in mass media and magazines for parents, gaming has been raised as an hobby for whole family. By the way, Nintendo has usually done some censorhip of it own. For example Zombies and Mortal Kombat was censored from the worst violence.