Michael Pachter has been laughed at endlessly for his belief in a Wii HD among other ridiculous statements. For the longest time people just called him stupid, but some months ago that changed. What if Pachter doesn't say this things because he is stupid, but rather to influence people's perception of the market?

Now what if the same holds true for third party publishers when it comes to Wii support? Early on it was easy to just say that they are stupid and don't get the Wii, that's why their games are so lacking. But, as with Pachter, over time it's hard to believe that that is the case.

Here's my theory: Lack of sales for "mature" or "hardcore" content on the Wii as well as lack of processing power are named as excuses to why the Wii isn't getting particular games, but those aren't the real reasons. Third parties know that the Wii is a threat to their core market on the HD consoles. If they provide similar content on the Wii, eventually it's going to start to eat into the sales of their HD games and they don't want that to happen after they invested so much money upfront into the 360 and PS3. Thus they deliberately deny the Wii games that would sell and also don't shy away from setting games purposefully up for failure.

This theory is backed up by:

1) The PSP getting its own versions of games like Soul Calibur, Assassin's Creed and Split/Second while the Wii does not. The PSP sells undoubtly less software than the Wii and its processing power is also below the Wii, meaning HD games have to be redone to run on the PSP. This undermines the excuses third parties usually give.

2) The almost complete absence of the popular genres on the HD consoles on the Wii. FPS, TPS, sandbox and action titles, racing and fighting games. It's hard to find such titles on the Wii, there's not much choice. What is there consists of B-team games (Call of Duty), bastardizations (Need for Speed: Nitro) and games made by developers who can't afford to make HD games.

3) Changing the genre of a popular IP to make a Wii spinoff is also a popular practice. Soul Calibur Legends, Castlevania Judgment and Dead Space Extraction for example.

4) Ubisoft's recently announced Ghost Recon game for Wii, because that one really is set up for failure. Low production values coupled with being on rails and that way after the collective complaints from last year that sales for on rails games on the Wii were decreasing more and more.

5) Epic not porting the Unreal Engine 3 to the Wii, but to the iPhone. I am pretty sure that Epic would be able to charge higher prices/licensing fees for UE3 if AAA games remain on the HD consoles instead of moving to the Wii. Thus the Wii also posed a threat to their core business, unlike the iPhone which eventually got its version of UE3. Not that third parties were really interested to make AAA games for the Wii anyway.

For years we used to say that third parties were caught off guard by the Wii's success and that's why certain games didn't make their appearance on the Wii, but that excuse doesn't hold up nowadays. This is 2010 and all the genres that are present on the HD consoles should have arrived on the Wii by now.

Look, I could argue a lot of that stuff, but what I'm focusing on right now is that you're saying that it magnifies the difference in profit per unit by OVER EIGHT TIMES.  You are really confident this is the case? 

@Squilliam

I see you conveniently forgot to mention that Wii games cost less to develop than HD games.

Developers are gamers, most gamers hate the wii , hence, the lack of wii games!

FUCk, I had a whole well thought out response but something happened and it got erased, dafuck happened to vgchartz??? 

anyway to sum up, you mention the reason you just don't want to believe them, it's the hardware and general lack of mature content support on wii being the reason 3rd parties don't give a crap. 

Nintendo struct gold with the wii and there is no denying that, the fanbase they got has benefited them greatly, it just the industry doesn't care for that fanbase (see you own thread on casuals). Also why would 3rd parties invest time and money on making mature content on wii when Nintendo themselves don't care, see that's were Nintendo 1st parties and Sony 1st parties differ, they are both big but Nintendo 1st parties seem to put out the same content, I mean content that's nothing out of the ordinary for wii, Sony on the other hand puts out every thing, from casual to hardcore and that reflects in the 3rd parties, the see Sony as a platform that gets it, I didn't mention M$ because the vast majority of their support is 3rd party.

I think when we get a Nintendo that puts out killzones infamouses and uncharteds on top of the typical mario zelda metroid, 3rd parties will take notice, that and they need hardware that can compete, ps2 was the weakest link last gen but it more than pulled it's weight compared to xbox and gamecube, wii however the difference is far to wide...

Im not forgetting that. Im also not forgetting that gamers on DX9 consoles also eat up sequels so larger development costs of setting up a franchise or engine are amortized over a number of projects. A number of important series took 3-4 years to make in the first installment and then after that they often took just 24 months and took fewer people to make them. In addition to that, much of the work done in this generation on the DX9 consoles is transferrable to the next generation of consoles, including the next generation Wii whenever that comes. This is the reason why the complaints of high development costs have dried up.

Nope. Im figuring total number of units on the Xbox 360 and PS3 for third parties are about equal each with the Wii, so the overall market on the DX9 consoles are around double the 3rd party market share on the Wii. From there I consider that the average cycle for a lot of games is very short so that limits packaging, warehouse and production costs by doing large runs and the average sale price is higher. So I figure they must make at least 50% more per unit of a DX9 console sold than they do for the Wii. Hence my maths, 200% * 150% = 300%.