Im starting to think 3rd parties just dont like Nintendo, the N64, Gamecube and Wii all paled in comparison for 3rd party support to what Sony and Microsoft got.

Only on the handhelds does Nintendo seem to get great 3rd party exclusives

Let's assume by some miracle, Nintendo was able to make the Wii as powerful as the other systems, without breaking $300 in MSRP, or selling it at a loss.

Either they keep the traditional controller, and still make the GC games they were making, which mostly don't have mainstream appeal, and the system continues to sell less than the last one. Porting be damned, the system would have too little overall sales (userbase doesn't affect individual game sales, but software shipments of all the games on a system*).

Or Nintendo makes the Wiimote ,and Wii Sports just with greater graphical detail. It would still be an evil casual game, same with Wii Play and Wii Fit. Developer still decide Wii owners are "the wrong people", and still find ways to neglect the system. Modern Warfare would be an exception (since it actually was tech issues that kep the Wii engine from being done in time for the first MW game), but not because Infinity Ward would actually want to work on the Wii, but because Activision makes them.

You do realize that an Intel Atom (D525) and a $35 Graphics card (ATI Radeon HD 5450) would produce very similar results to the HD consoles today, don’t you?

If starting from scratch using modern technology it would be fairly easy for a company like Nintendo to exceed the performance of the HD consoles in a $200 system; and with every day that passes it becomes easier and easier. Hell, by the end of 2012 I wouldn’t be too surprised to see a phone with (roughly) the processing power of the HD consoles.

IIRC Okami Wii actually met shipment expectations (300k), it was Zack & Wiki that didn't early on (no clue what those were though).  RE4 Wii and REUC both shattered expectations though... RE4 Wii was expected to sell only 450k (shipped 1.7m), REUC only 600k (shipped 1.2m).

Depends on quite a few things.

technical abilities of the console, the controls, the online play and the userbase.

The Wii is already getting many 3rd party titles. It's just that many of them are shovelware games, which in this case unfortunately are cheap to produce and undoubtedly have its fanbase.

I understand very well why big companies release their blockbuster titles on the HD consoles and almost only feed the Wii with cash-in titles.

Good for the company, not so good for the Wii owner.

As long as the Wii userbase don't truly support 3rd party big budget titles they won't see much more of them and unless the userbase off the Wii 2 can prove them wrong I don't think the support will get any better. A big budget title is supposed to make massive revenue and if it only breaks even or sells 1 million on the Wii it's simply not enough. It's far more efficient to release 3 or 4 low budget games. Smaller teams, lower budget, but about the same revenue.

I meant the Wii then, not the next system.

It's not that they don't like Nintendo. Its just that Nintendo has the habit of scaring developers and publishers off.

N64: Strongest system in real time graphics for its generation (not counting the Dreamcast) but the cartridge format scared a lot of developers and publishers off.

GC: More powerful then the PS2, but the controller and limited size on GC discs (1.5 compared to full DVDs on both PS2 and original Xbox) limited it.

Wii: Biggest fan base, but most developers thought it would fail early on, so when it didn't they scrambled and found themselves working with hardware that was supposed to be cheaper and easier to develop for but was not challenging or gave enough freedom for developers. The standard controller and its unique (or restrictive without MotionPlus) schemes hasn't won over a lot of developers either.

So it isn't so much as hate... although I don't doubt a few publishers do hate that Nintendo can almost consistently kill one of their titles in genre's they try their hands in. That being said, if publishers make money off it, they would release it, it is just mainly so few want to divert the funds to create a better product that could sell.

Some people here have talked to developers, at a lot more hate Nintendo than you think.

I think thats a little optimistic. The HD 5450 is rated at 100 Gigaflops and 8-12.8MS/S respectively with 80 stream processors and the Atom core is a little weak on its own. More likely a better bet would be something like Ontario with two 2Gbit GDDR5 ram modules on a 64 bit bus with cores which are around as strong as an Athlon X2 64 mated to around 160 stream processors. That would yield effectively a different version of the Xbox 360 which ought to perform about the same on paper if not being a reasonable bit more efficient in practice.

To really exceed the current consoles with a <25W CGPU you'd have to wait for the 28nm processes from either TSMC or Glofo so therefore they could either have > or = 240 stream processors and either a dual or quad core CPU.

Third party support on the follow-up to the Wii depends almost entirely on two things:

How high the quality of 3rd party software is on the 3DS.

and

If Nintendo fans actually start buying third party games. 

If gamers and (Nintendo fans especially) buy a well-rounded variety of 3DS launch titles, it'll bode well for future 3rd party support.  If all they do is spend their money on slighty improved N64 games we all played to death over the last 14 years, and ignore serious 3rd party efforts like Resident Evil, Street Fighter, MGS (which is also a port, but of a much more recent title), etc; then the sadly typical cycle of 3rd party companies abandoning the [Nintendo] system due to ignored software will happen once again. 

Frankly, I wish it was launching with a Castlevania game.  Castlevania was the first franchise on my last two Nintendo portable systems.  Be fun to keep that going, like a tradition.