3rd parties have found excuses in EVERYTHING, whether they are logical or not.

A large userbase = too many casuals in their eyes. All the people who bought the core Nintendo games do not exist. With the Wii being 74m , suddenly "no one can compete with Nintendo".......

Soriku, what game is that in the first picture in your signature? The one where the guy is jumping off the cliff.

I tend to think both Nintendo and 3rd parties are going to try harder next time around.  Both sides understand there's a problem and 3DS is pretty encouraging...

Alrighty that's an understandable rational...but it's total BS! PS2 had a huge user base, yet there was no shortage of 3rd party support.

And ~10mil that bought brawl...there's an existing core userbase. I would think the more users the better.

I definitely think that a handful of dev/pub's, namely EA, are trying to put crap on the wii to appease the ninty crowd while bringing the library quality down a few notches.

"Alrighty that's an understandable rational...but it's total BS! PS2 had a huge user base, yet there was no shortage of 3rd party support."

It also had the least specs (aside from the Dreamcast), required work to get good effects (like the TEV system), and a bunch of other things that it's clear developers are being hypocritical about.

new generation, same bullshit from 3rd parties

First party Nintendo games haven't appealed to me for a long time either.  I liked mario as a platformer, when I was into platformers, but now that i'm not, mario doesn't do anything for me, despite knowing that when I was young I probably would love it to freakin death. Same goes with Zelda (although I think the old zelda games are better than the new ones). 

I truly dunno why 3rd party games sucked so much on the Wii this gen, other than to say that its not easy to make a good motion game that works well. It's alot easier to stick with what you know and make a 'good enough' high def traditional controller game.

If Nintendo sticks with its guns, and SONY Move gets popular enough, it will be MS who will be the odd man out with their weird ass motion control system when the next gen comes around.

As a lifelong gamer with no experience working in the industry, I have a few observations and questions:

1. How much does culture factor in?

The current CEO of Sony is Howard Stringer a Welsh-born American businessman. Does Nintendo not having a Western businessman leading the entire company, not just SCEA, from the top down factor in on decisions regarding 3rd parties? Nintendo has Reggie Fils-Aime for their North American division. Would putting Reggie in Iwata's position make the corporate culture at Nintendo more conducive to 3rd party support for Nintendo?

2. Speaking of 3rd party support, why do we ignore the 800 lb. gorilla in the room, the DS, which has sold close to twice the number of Wiis?

If you propose that Nintendo has no 3rd party support, then be fair and analyze the library of the DS. It could be that handhelds are Nintendo's most profitable enterprise, thus all their efforts for 3rd party support go there instead of the Wii because of games like Wii Sports, Wii Play, and Wii Fit selling obscene numbers in the 20 plus million range make 3rd party support less attractive.

3. With the success of games like Wii Sports, Wii Play, and Wii Fit, why would it be wise for Nintendo to pursue 3rd party support when they have already produced exclusives which no Modern Warfare game could ever hope to aspire to in sheer sales?

I have to be a bit contrarian here. I understand the want for 3rd party support for Nintendo from the perspective as a Western consumer, but how would 3rd party support really help Nintendo when Nintendo has a different business plan than either Sony or Microsoft?

4. Does 3rd party support lead to a Red Ocean?

If all 3 console makers viciously court 3rd parties during the next generation, then would it lead to a red ocean competition where a sale of Modern Warfare 4 on a Sony console leads to one less Modern Warfare 4 game being sold on Nintendo's console or Microsoft's console and vice versa? If so, then what is the benefit to the console maker who can create 20 million sellers on their own? What is the incentive for them to dive into that Red Ocean?

I see the incentive for the game developer, I just don't see the same gain for Nintendo.

Personally, I think 3rd party support is great, but not necessary. The interests of the console makers are not the same interests of the game developers. Game developers want to create games on all 3 consoles because doing so enables them access to the largest possible market. On the other hand, Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft benefit from exclusives defining their "experience."

The best possible gain I can see from 3rd party support is buying the game developers outright. Nintendo gets no credit if Treyarch's game does good on all 3 consoles. Where Nintendo would get credit and more hardware sales if they bought a 3rd party like Treyarch with Treyarch making games exclusive for the Nintendo attracting new Nintendo buyers.

I think that 3rd party support is important, but Nintendo shouldn't allow their own games to fall behind, or become dependant on them.

Nintendo hit a slump at the end of 2008 that continued into 2009, and they are still on rocky ground compared to where they were in 2006-mid 2008; they had a drought of good games, which healthy 3rd party support could've covered for them, and kept the Wii from a slide.  On the other hand, 3rd parties are what made the PlayStation and PS2, but in this generation, they are split between the PS3 and 360, and is a major reason why the PS3 took such a hard tumble.  Nintendo has to be responsible for its own fortunes and the success of its platforms, and while 3rd party support can go a long way towards accomplishing that, they're also unreliable.

And you have a point with 3rd parties being in a red ocean, group think is a major factor when industries stay in a red ocean because it's easy to convince yourself to stay in place when everyone else is doing the same thing.  Sometimes you really need a singular company to stand up and lead the way into uncharted territory, and who better than a 1st party?

I agree, thank you for adding your awesome insight in response to my post.

As for Nintendo, you can only stay hot for so long. And Nintendo's hotness is almost wholly derived from a Mario game or product such as Wii Sports, which inevitably hit a sales ceiling. Once DKCR, Kirby's Epic Yarn and Epic Mickey come out during the holidays, then all this talk of a Nintendo decline will be snap shots in time between the release of a Nintendo flagship series.