I suppose...

If I were to put money on it, though, I'd bet on the HD consoles, by a sizable margin. Really, they make up the majority of the potential audience for this game - males gamers, online focus, last gen (PS2-era) values and controls. Honestly, you'd be hard pressed to find another Wii exclusive that's a more perfect fit for HD consoles...

I'm not saying it would have been a better business decision, of course. I'm also only talking about its sales in the west.

That still assumes those are guaranteed to sell a game, when the HD sales show those are not enough.

Don't bring monster hunter into this. That game stood aganist everything the wii stood up for.

The game had a very limited local muiltplayer. Even though the biggest games on wii USE local muilplayer
Than it used a alt controller which is basically a regular controller. No motion controls at all. 
The game sells on online muiltplayer. We all know those games don't sell huge on wii. Its all about local muiltplayer.  (With the expetion of the call of duty games)
 
Monster hunter was a last gen game with online and better graphics

It is fair actually. The iPhone is to Wii development in terms of risk for a large publisher what Wii shovelware is to a 'AAA' title. It costs absolutely nothing to distribute games and they have an inbuilt word of mouth mechanism (its a phone). The only cost is really just the sunk costs involved in making and certifying the titles in question. There are precisely zero logistical and publishing costs to consider and the margin on every title is a flat 70%.

That isn't fair either, since you're responding with a different argument. And the Wii is not a risk. Developers just pretend it is an excuse.

Not sure what you mean, can you clarify?

@killeryoshis: I agree, that's why I brought the game up. It was to illustrate why some third party games don't exactly light up the sales charts, when there would at least be a chance if they built actual Wii games, rather than PS2 games with tacked on motion (or even no motion) controls.

Instead of compromising by changing the games to suit the Wii, third parties insult the console and its users, and retreat to HD consoles where they're more at home.

You listed things assuming those were proof the game would sell better. That only works if most of the games that met those were hits on the HD systems, and there are plenty of flops and poor sellers that show otherwise. Take Capcom's own Lost Planet 2, which not only met that list, but was more of a western appealing game.

Developers have a very good excuse, they can self publish on the iPhone. Anyway I think you're talking about publishers when you say developers so I will treat it as such.

In any case to respond to the original point, if RAM is a deciding factor then the iPhone has two very significant advantages. Not only does it have more available for the game to use, it also has extremely low latency flash -> ram transfer which is over 1000* better than the optical drive on the Wii and it's latency, not absolute transfer rates which kill performance on optical drive based titles.

In any case to support my previous point further the comparison between iPhone distribution and Wii is about comparable to optical disc vs flash in terms logistical efficiencies. With digital distribution theres no upfront cost to create and ship goods, theres no under/over shipping of goods, there are no returns to deal with or faulty product, theres comparatively unlimited shelf space in terms of keeping games on the shelves even when they aren't selling and finally they attain a higher margin on their goods and can price them lower.

The problem is that means that HD systems not only have most of those problems with games on disc, but also the iPhone being BS still stands.

Plus the iPhone was flocked to for the belief that was where the next big thing was, not because of distribution costs.

Angry people, you want the game buy the system that has it and stop acting like you are running 3 major gaming companies and co-operating the 4th.