Right you are. Too many people here are obsessing with where the games are on the charts.

Only 2 3rd parties on the top 10? 3rd party titles must be doing horribly!

What matters to a company is not chart position (ok - it matters a little; we all like to have bragging rights now and again) but how many of the titles released actually make a profit.

It may be that EA has a better chance to land a Top 10 title on the 360 or PS3 than on the Wii, but that doesn't tell the whole tale, or even a very important part of it. What companies need is:

1) How much did the game cost to develop?

2) How many total copies were sold (ie - sell enough to make a profit?)

3) How many titles for that system failed to turn a profit?

4) Are the profits from successful games able to cover the losses incurred by the rest?

I don't claim to know the answers to any of these questions for any of these consoles, but until we do have them, it is impossible to say which console is "better" for third party publishers.

For the people who claim I'm pulling numbers out of my ass ... being that this is a site that contains SALES DATA maybe you should LOOK AT THIS SITE before claiming something like that. 30 Seconds of not being a retard would have taken you here : http://vgchartz.com/games/index.php?name=&console=Wii&publisher=&genre=&keyword=&order=Sales

Now, with the numbers to break even we have been told by major publishers both that a PS3 game will take 500,000 units to break even, and that it cost 1/4 to 1/2 as much to develop Wii game that it would take to develop a similar PS3 game.

Wii has nearly a 20M install base, its attach rate for 3rd parties is half of the ps3's..

Where'd you come up with that number? 

Attach rate is meaningless ...

Would any publisher in the world trade a game that sold to 10% of the Nintendo DS's userbase for 50% of the PS3's userbase? No, because the DS game would have sold more units and cost less to develop at the same time.

Maybe so, but this is true on any console.. The majority of Wii 3rd party games that have tanked are absouutly crap with little effort set forth by the devs, so they got what they had coming. 

@ Leo-J:

So the PS2 was a failure because most of the big games had a 3-4% attach rate? Same idea. You fail.

argh... 3rd party games are not underperforming compared to 360 and ps3... look at the multiplatform games that are any good and the wii holds its own against the 360. guitar hero is a perfect example, 360 is a few hundred thousand in front, but the wii is outselling it each week now.

then look at games like madden. the 360 owned the wii. the difference? the wii version was crappy and full of bugs.

if a company puts a good game on the wii, it wil sell as well as or better than on the other platforms. It just looks bad because so few companies have been putting good games on the wii.

A few games relative to expectations...



3rd party failures on Wii...

1. Most of EA's lineup. Tiger Woods 2007 and MySims have been good performers, but games like Madden, Need for Speed and others are mediocre performers compared to other systems. Luckily those are the yearly games people rail against (in non-Wii related discussions, at least). Boogie did very meh.

2. Konami's original efforts. Elebits did fairly well (quarter million), but Dewy so far doesn't look too good. There was probably an okay-sized investment in these.

3. Zack and Wiki... I believe VGC is vastly overtracking this title. We'll see.

4. Manhunt 2... Hahaha.




Games which have handily beaten expectations...

1. RE games on Wii. RE4: Wii may become the best-selling version!

2. The dreaded mini-game comps! RRR, Cooking Mama, Trauma Center, Mario and Sonic, Carnival Games... All kicking ass.

3. Guitar Hero. This franchise is growing by leaps and bounds and kicking tail on every system, so it doesn't really count.

4. Certain liscensed titles like LEGO Star Wars, High School Musical and others.




Games performing basically along expectations...

1. Red Steel. Purely by accident. Supposed to be a million-seller, damned by reviews, boosted by huge Wii sales during software drought.

2. Sega's lineup of exclusives... Secret Rings, Monkey Ball... Slow burns towards possible million.

3. MySims as mentioned above.

4. Dragon Quest Swords... Big sales, no tail in Japan.