Great point. Despite profiting from the Wii, 3rd parties continue to scale back support in favor of HD titles that are just as hit and miss as Wii titles but frankly more costly when they fail. Look at what Lost Planet 2 did to Capcom's bottom line. How many developers have went belly up this gen because of the increased budgets of HD titles.

yer it is all about the ports. If they can do it easily they will if not well we will have the same sort of support.

The successor to the Wii will obviously have significantly better third party support upon release, with a significantly stronger line-up of games in conventional genres using well known IPs developed by strong developers; and if the system is similarly popular, having more quality core games will ensure that these genres sell well by attracting more core gamers (or at least attracting their attention better).

There are two main reasons for this:

First off, third party publishers are not going to risk “missing out” on the success of another Nintendo platform after they ignored the DS and Wii to their own detriment; and, rather than ignore potential customers for 3 years to throw them a few scraps and claim that they must have never been interested in those experience in the first place, there will probably be a significant effort to produce games across all genres and let the customers decide what they want.

The second reason comes down to processing power and performance. I don’t think that either Sony or Microsoft will produce a console that launches at a price higher than $400, and I doubt they would produce systems which consumed as much energy and ran as hot as their current consoles did. At the same time, for at least the first 2 to 3 years of the next generation many/most multiplatform games will be released using the current HD consoles as the game’s minimum requirements. Now, with a brand new $35 graphics card surpassing the performance of the HD consoles at retail (with both manufacturer and retailer profit) I doubt Nintendo will have difficulty producing a console that isn’t powerful enough to receive mutli-platform games in the next generation.

Pretty much.  I think 3DS again illustrates Nintendo's likely Wii 2 plan, release a comparably/slightly better specced platform than the current competition, release it well before the competition is ready with their own next gen successors to jump the cycle first, and focus on extreme ease of use development/tool side to help attract support.  I expect Wii 2 to have it's own wow-factor "hook" as well, much like 3D for 3DS, motion/pointer controls for Wii or touch control for DS.

Also like 3DS, I think you can expect Nintendo to make a concerted effort to line up key 'core' 3rd party IP upfront.  At first you can probably expect a flood of PS360 'definitive version' ports (similar to RE4 Wii Edition), but I think they'll also line up key original titles upfront (and mostly coming from Japan, where they have more influence and stronger 3rd party relationships).  Iwata's spoken on the 'core' problem with DS/Wii, about how those markets were never properly pioneered or sustained, and 3DS shows it's something Nintendo's making central to their next gen plans.  3DS feels almost like a PlayStation launch in terms of 3rd party commitments and announcements, I expect Wii 2 to be more or less the same thing...

What I mean is that developpers will be more willing to take risks on new IPs/single platform games if they have more secure revenue from their multiplatform games.

I can't tell if this comment is meant to be satire or just misguided.

All game systems sell better during the holidays. That's why there are generally so many releases in the fourth quarter.

And as for changing its ways ... (a) Nintendo recruited third parties this time around which was very different for them and (b) it offered a very different console. 

It is true that some people want things that Nintendo is not delivering. That is fine. But it would be nice for third parties to at least try. 

Mike from Morgantown

I think many people are seriously underestimating the kinds of performance gains Nintendo could make with their next console. If you look at GPUs available today and speculate what could be very low cost and low energy consumption at the end of 2011 (or later) and in ATI’s line-up the Radeon HD 5670, Radeon HD 5750 and Radeon HD 5770  may be viable candidates.

To use an example, the jump from the HD consoles to the next Nintendo platform could be similar to the jump from the Dreamcast to the Wii.

This isn’t to say that Nintendo will be pushing the limits, but it will be 6 or more years between the release of the XBox 360 and Nintendo’s next platform; and even a very low performance system built today could easily exceed the performance of the HD consoles.

Oh yeah, I'm not meaning to underplay what the Wii 2 spec will be... DC to Wii seems a pretty apt comparison, and I'd say PSP to 3DS isn't all that dissimilar.  They should be able to put together an impressive piece of kit for a pretty low cost by next year or 2012.

Yeah, but with all the stupid excuses thrown this gen, it makes it likely they would have avoided porting to the Wii anyway.

Thats pretty much how I see it as well. However I think we are limited by the timing and availability of the 28nm process node before Nintendo can buy the current mid range level performance chips within their price/power envelope.