A couple of days ago I cracked my friends Wii right open in software so he could use an external HDD to load games from due to the fact that hes a paraplegic and getting up out of his chair to change discs is much more difficult than you or I. It was a fairly complicated process to do it but it shows how weak the Wii's software protection is so that the latest firmware can get ripped right open in software to crush the DRM courtesy of a guide freely available over the internet. 

Now my suspicion is that core gamers simply don't value the Wii or its games and they judge them based on the content available and graphics etc and find them wanting, so the fact that Nintendo games tend to stay higher in price and third party games don't tend to sell at full price gives a pretty decent display of the value proposition many people see in Wii games. The fact that the Wii games are cheaper to make likely makes people feel that the games themselves ought to be much cheaper than their counterparts on the DX9 twins. This is probably why Europe which has historically got a higher percentage piracy rate is also a weaker region proportionately for core games.

Also explains why the console sells so much, as it has inherited the previous gens PS2 position.

"they judge them based on the content available and graphics etc and find them wanting"

The reason I don't believe that is because it hasn't been proven that those who buy the HD games like them for those reasons. It's just assumed because they buy those games that it's because the of reasons the vocal minority gamers do.

And this vocal minority includes developers, so they find the Wii lacking, and do their best to hide what they think is the problem, when the real problem is that they focus on that instead of what actually sells those core games.

Thats also supported by the average sale price for Wii third party games. Pachter said IIRC they were $33 in the U.S. and we have also seen multiple instances of games which started poorly finally take off and sell reasonably after a $20 price cut. If people simply don't value the software at the regular sale price it creates a discord which can lead to piracy or it can lead to people simply not buying the software at the regular full release price.

But that doesn't mean it's because those are Wii games. Those games are just worth about that price to consumers period. It would be the same on the HD systems.

Piracy, like used sales, is another excuse for poor content on the game-makers side.

Sure is. If people want to buy it, the pirates don't matter.

Is it? You've got one system with very strong copy protection and the other has a big downside to piracy in the form of losing access to Xbox Live and some console features. With comparable games, features like online are far weaker as well as overall user experience due to loading times etc. These features are more likely to reduce value for a Wii game for a significant proportion of the core gamer market on the Wii, which by itself doesn't make up a majority of sales but it does have relevance when talking about the relative sales of applicable core titles.

Core gamers pirate the shit out of Wii and DS games. And core games get disproportinately pirated by these people. DS moreso than the Wii because DS piracy is a lot more easy.

I have considered modding my wii but If I ever do decide to mod it, I'll do so after my warranty period is over (assuming you get 1 year warranty after purchase and with the 90 day warranty bonus for joining Club Nintendo, that means I should be good until July 2011 warranty-wise.) But honestly, I don't really see much reason for modding the Wii. It would allow me to play imports (ie. Another Code R was released in Japan and PAL only. No NTSC-U release) and you can pirate games sure.

But considerng I have a rental subscription and will continue to maintain that subscription to play Xbox 360 games, which I don't pirate at all, I can pretty much play the vast majority of the Wii games I want at no extra cost to myself. Aside from the odd Wiiware/Virtual Console game (most games available on VC can be played on an emulator for your PC anyway), import and the odd obscure game that isn't in stock at my rental place (ie. Fragile Dreams, Ju-On, Valhalla Knights, Trauma Center Second Opinion, stuff like that), I don't even really need to buy Wii games anyway. So piracy would really just make things more convenient to me and give me free access to the odd Wiiware/VC, import or obscure game. Not a big deal. Especially when I'm not exactly that crazy to play those games. The Wii games that I tend to really want to play tend to be available for rental.

And then there's the whole Wii homebrew scene but I'm not really interested in. Homebrew is kinda neat I admit but something I can easily live without if it's too much trouble for me to enable homebrew. DS homebrew is extremely easy but I'm kinda iffy about Wii homebrew. It seems like the Wii is a lot easier to brick.

That just means less piracy, not more sales. Just because one can't pirate something doesn't mean one will buy it. One has to want to buy it to make one buy it.

As for online, that's debatable, since many of those online games have been shown to sell better with local multiplayer, and worse without. So that does not reduce value.

Loading times? Are you kidding me? The Wii's loading is no worse than the other systems. So claiming that reduces value only counts for those that believe that false fact.