tbh the Wii's successor can't really have worse 3rd party support

however, I always find it quite ironic that the Wii, despite the crappy level of decent 3rd party support has managed to secure what is most likely the most important 3rd party exclusive of the generation on home consoles, Dragon Quest X.

I think the Wii's successor will have good 3rd party support, but not to the level of the other platforms.

This is 100% correct, I don't think 3rd parties quite knew how to respond to the Wii since the gap in performance was a historically big one, porting is difficult and simply making a PS360/PC game gets not only simpler due to the amount of tweaking required to "fit" the Wii but it also makes sense in a business perspective since the PS360/PC install base and overall software market is very big indeed. The fact that most serious 3rd party efforts (Zack & Wiki, The Conduit, FF: Crystal Chronicles, No More Heroes) sold very poorly didn't exactly help instill good faith in the developers either. This generation has presented a difficult market since its effectively two markets with no obvious bridge across the chasm.

I wonder if it was because 3rd party developers did not know how to fit their game to the Wii and were scared of how to create a game around the Wii mote? Is it because the overwhelming majority of game developers and 3rd party developers are based in the West and would have a hard time communicating with a Japanese publisher? Is it Nintendo's history of the past two generations?

So many unanswered questions, but I have an opinion. If the Wii keeps on pace and outsells the 360 by 30-40 million consoles by the next generation, then would it not make sense for 3rd party game developers to try an negotiate exclusive publishing contracts with Nintendo as it is the console with the largest audience? At the rate Nintendo puts out games, I sense many game developers would prefer to create Nintendo exclusives without having to worry about a Bobby Kotick wanting them to release a game before it is finished and wanting them to release a game where the single player campaign is spliced into 3 separate products priced at $30-50 (Glaring at you StarCraft 2!!! 12 years and I get a third of the single player campaign!).

I find the argument that ports sells better good at face value, but there are many factors to take into account. What are the expenses in making a game for the 360, PC and PS3? Is a port just coding it onto another disc? How expensive and time consuming does making multiplayer for a port game cost to run it smoothly on all 3 systems? Licensing fees for Live and PS network ontop of creating and maintaining servers for the PC version?

These questions get at how expensive it is to port a game on to 3 systems? Is the extra few million copies worth the extra expenses?

The way I see this generation, what happened with 3rd parties was a self fulfilling prophecy:

In order for their games to sell well, 3rd party core games need a market. 3rd parties initially didn't believe the Wii will succeed. And some thought it was much weaker than it was, so didn't want to develop for it, or so some said. So at best most gave it half hearted/relatively low budget efforts for a very long time, If anything at all.

As a result they killed a lot of the willingness of the core market that was on the Wii to buy core games on it and a lot more of the potential core market that would have later joined the Wii had the "right" core exclusives been there.

And so they brought on the condition that is the present reason most use to not develop for the WIi - they're afraid it won't sell enough. Unfortunately even those already committed are shaking in their boots, you can see that. I am not sayng they are correct to do that, just that they are.

What does all this have to do with Wii2/Super Wii 3rd party support? Well if Nintendo secure some quality 3rd party core launch (or launch window) exclusives for their new console from a wide variety of developers, its non-Nintendo core market share will grow (while not all, lots of gamers go where their games are), 3rd party core games will sell much better on Wii2 because the market will be there, and so more 3rd party efforts will be made for it moving forward...

To illistrate this with an easy example - get Final Fantasy XV (or XVI) as a Wii2 launch game, and you will see all Japanese core gamers get a Wii2.

Well the only reason the Wii has little 3rd party support is because porting a PC (modern), 360, and PS3 game over is a pain in the ass.

If a Wii HD was released and it was technically at par or superior with 360 and PS3, it would get many of the same 3rd party games. Gamecube was a fine example.

The only one of those that anyone could possibly claim was a serious effort though, was The Conduit. The other three definitely weren't meant to sell much more than they did, unless their publishers were utterly deluded.

They just used the poor results of these "test games" to help justify their neglect of the Wii to their investors. That's why you also get all the analyst noise against the Wii. It's propaganda to prevent investor revolt.

Not only that, even when the Wii games perform well, Developers still give it little support in favor of the HD consoles. I think Wii2's 3rd party support will be much better out of necessity. We've seen what ignoring half the market has done to 3rd bottom lines, they'll have to get on board with Wii2. Nintendo doesn't need third parties but third parties certainly need them.

The question is, how powerful will the next Nintendo console be? Enough for 3rd party devs to jump ship, or as powerful as the current HD consoles?

If the next Nintendo console is as powerful as the 360/PS3, then Wii2 will be getting current gen ports, with the huge disadvantage of not having an installed base, which will inevitably mean terrible SW sales. Now, if the Wii2 has also some sort of totally new innovative gameplay, as well as a good online service, then devs might start developing games for it by simply porting the engines and then utilizing the innovating capabilities.

In other words, Wii2 must be really innovative, and at the same time very powerful, enough for 3rd parties to be able to port the frameworks and engines and develop for all 3 consoles simultaneously. Even then, developers will probably not see the Wii2 as a console suited for mature and core games, therefore it could presumably be that they won't porting all games to it, and 360/PS3 would be a better choice, considering their huge installed bases. Nintendo will have to build a new base, while PS3 and 360 will be still getting a lot of support. Wii proved this gen that being innovative and cheap wasn't enough for 3rd parties to take it seriously.

So Wii2 should be EXTREMELY powerful for 3rd parties to consider it a next-gen starter, right? But Nintendo is totally against getting their consoles on the market for more than 250$, in which case a really powerful machine won't even qualify, we would be talking about 500$ or more and not knowing if it that is even profitable for them.

I think they are in a very tough position when it comes to gathering 3rd party support. 3rd party support ensures and enables a long lifespan for a console (PS1, PS2 and now the HD consoles) so unless Nintendo can carry their next console by their own for a very extended period (remember they will have 2 - 4 consoles to support simultaneously), I don't think they will be able to make Wii2 last any longer than all their previous home consoles. There's some serious considerations to be made, and for me it all boils down to how innovative and powerful their next console is. Third parties are content with ther current HD consoles installed bases, so I don't see them shifting resources away UNLESS something really drastic happens.

Which is probably why Iwata hinted they are waiting for the next system (http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=113775&page=1&str=159709649# ). That way they can secture good third party support for the Wii before they try for the next system. If it was even as good as the support the DS had, this would likely be a different story.