Konami is the best example. I think SE and Sega will be very late to the party (in terms of quality must buy titles).

Well if your asking specifically what large publisher is gonna miss the Wii boat, the answer is zero. They milk money out of every console and handheld and have done so from day one. Guitar Hero is even on the Macintosh! Even if it is just alful shovelware they will milk every system with every franchise. Thats why 360 owners got angry that EA bought out Bioware. They dont want an anual Mass Effect.

Right, as I said, no large company will put ZERO games on the Wii, but I can certainly imagine several doing nothing more than throwing a couple crumbs at the Wii and seeing what happens.

I honestly believe that some developers -- just like some gamers -- are in relentless, total disbelief at the reality of the market. What company will never make a major Wii game? What company will never put anything other than Playground or Carnival games or Dewey's Adventure on the system?

What company will go the entire lifespan of the Wii without ever giving it a game with an 80+ metacritic aggregate?

Who remembers the words of Dave Perry, the dev at Shiny? Sure, he's not very important anymore, but his viewpoint is telling; he's made it clear (on several occassions) that he believes that gamers are suddenly going to wake up and stop caring about the Wii; they'll suddenly realize the graphics stink and the controls are terrible, and the Wii will just... stop selling. Those are the sort of publishers I'm talking about.

I'm sure there are other (still relevant) developers who feel the same way. They're just totally and absolutely rejecting the reality of the situation, or simply deriding and scorning those that have different tastes (and thus, not supporting their tastes with games).

Here are Dave Perry's remarks:

http://www.joystiq.com/2007/07/21/dave-perry-wii-wont-last-gamers-want-prettier-games/
http://www.joystiq.com/2007/09/25/dave-perry-gamers-ignore-wiis-sloppy-controls/

On two separate occassions, he decided to speak out about the Wii and precisely why he thinks it's a fad. Again... just... absolute denial of the current events of the market place. Somewhere, someone much more important than Dave Perry must be thinking the same things, right? 

Totalwar, I agree on the Midway mention. As much as I love Midway's classic games, they have done very little since the early 90's that holds my interest. I enjoyed the first MK, then after the digitized graphics and gore wow-factor wore off, it was(in my mind) a pretty bland game. Though I didn't get to play a whole lot of it, Cruisn was fun but is obviously a throwaway franchise in their mind now. NBA Jam had it's moment in the sun also. I will say I enjoyed Gauntlet Dark Legacy though. Beyond these games, I have a hard time remembering having a fun time on a Midway game that wasn't a compilation disc.

I haven't played them, but their more recent "big" games like Stranglehold and BlackSite: Area 51 seem to be underwhelming and under-performing. So they are guilty of putting shovelware and been-there-done-that ports on the Wii and not trying anything significant, but it seems to me they are just missing the boat in a much broader sense. It's pretty sad when you consider their legacy of great games and how long they've been involved in the industry, but here's to hoping they can pull it together before going belly up.

Some developers are just known to be "not casual friendly" and risk losing their fan base because of it. In including small companys for the sake of mentioning , Blizzard would never make a Wii game even if they were given the opportunity. They thrive on their eco system of hardcore pc gamers that are very very loyal. They cannot risk shovel waring their games with a Warcraft spin off. Same with Lion head, given the opportunity, they would pass. Peter Molyneux has said many times, that they make games for gamers made by gamers and thats their philosophy. So theres a handful of highly rated develpors with huge fan bases that wont go the Wii route. Thats not impuning on the Wii at all, its just that the Wii has a different philosophy to gamming of games for everyone. Epic wont either as I believe they have publicy stated that and risk alienating their base.

Well i think a lot of third party's will be missing the Wii boat the first few years of its life, then only get bread crumbs, when they decide to jump on board it at its prime. Capcom will probably be one of the most succesfull third partys on the Wii. They have already put in great efforts and are carrying on as we speak. They are understanding the tech as time goes on, and will understand the philosophy of building a wii game better than many.This i believe will build a strong trust with the Wii demographic, thus giving Capcom more chances of succes in what ever new game they release. Any third party following capcoms trend (ie Namco Bandai with fragile) will also meet the same success. They will have the trust of the demographic.  

I think it takes time to know how to build a solid Wii game. Its obvious you can't approach creating a Wii game with the same mind set as you would more traditional games, and the more effort you put in it, the more you learn from it, so the next time round you improve on it. Knowing how to build a game on Wii will be a lot harder for third party's who are just starting out on thier first serious Wii project. Right now we are willing to give these Third Parties a chance, but that won't be the case in a few years when the Wii will be in its prime. 

Anyway that is my opinion.

Blizzard is really a terrible example here -- they have often specifically gone after casual players, and World of Warcraft is noted for being the most casually oriented of all MMOs (and most consider its success to be a direct result of this more casual focus). As a life long fan of Blizzard, I can absolutely say they'd produce a game for a casual base, if that game were QUALITY. "Hardcoreness" isn't one of their defining traits, quality is. Some of their games are hardcore (Starcraft), some aren't (World of Warcraft, Warcraft III). Otherwise, I agree. Lionhead definitely is a hardcore studio, and Epic has specifically stated that they're involved in high end graphical output (which should be obvious anyway, as they are the developers of the UE3). 

I think most third parties will "miss out" on the Wii.  First teams are making games for the PS3/360/PC or DS or PSP.  I don't think the boat is really there yet for them to miss.  Just my opinion.

Well casual oriented Warcraft is their base. They even refused Microsoft money to make a game on the 360 because they said that their PC gamers would get outraged. Its not about how casual thier games are either, even Halo is casual as hell, thats not the issue. Its about alienating their base of casual hardcore.