just wondering, but did you notice the only game on this list that is fromt he last 10 years is Nintendogs... The reason 3rd party games since the SNES aren't up as high is because the user base has been low the last 2 generations. Everyone who bought the N64 bought it for N games since every other devoloper went over to PSX. Even capcom was weak on the N64... The advantage that the N64 had over GC was they had Rare in their prime.

The GT series argument goes out the door with it also being a pack in at one time, if you want to exclude pack-ins, but when you think about it games become pack ins because they sell well in the first place, if a game sells millions and most consumers that buy the console also buy the game with the console, well the smart thing to do is just go ahead and put it with the system, they've already made their money and then some with the software they help the consumer money wise so they get a great game with the console, then they save money... to buy OTHER games.

The game industry has had some trouble the past couple of generations, mainly with third parties, in the past a small third party could come up and make money with the game industry, with the past generation the only third parties to make money were huge companies, Blizzard, Activision, EA, etc. lots of small companies died out and the small companies are the main ones that bring new ideas and take risks and with the Wii its cheaper to develop for so it could help those third parties sell games and save money, so therefore you can say Wii saved the game industry again.

It is good to see facts put out there that Nintendo has done a lot for the industry and the software sales reflect that, Nintendo does a lot to take risks and try to make something for everyone, with the NES it was hard for them to even get retailers to even carry the system they put the money out there to make it a safe bet for retailers, money which most game companies didn't have at the time, so not just any company could have came along and resurrected the game industry in America. Cheers to Nintendo, and if you don't see the things they're done for you as a gamer then you should but the controller down and probably put your head in a meat grinder before coming to this forum to air out your ignorance and bad spelling/grammar.

My god ... is this all you can say . You pick on my grammar ... WTF ? When people do that I know that I really pissed them off . Bealive me , saving back than the video game industry didnt take much . Get a cheap console , with some decent 1st party games , and you have a saved market ... its not like the video game industry was dead , it was just stagnating .

PS : if you dont like my hideous grammar , my atrocious spelling or my flawed logic , than dont answer to my post ... its simple as that :) 

 Nintendo made everybody believes that videogames were back again, despite the mass lack of quality of the previous atari games. 

@ hunter_alien

As far as I knew, the story went that after the abominable failure before the NES, the situation was so bad that retailers refused to stock anything related to video games owing to how badly burned they'd been before. Nintendo had to invent gyromite as a robot add-on because it was the only way under which shops would consider carrying video-games.

Nintendo did US focus tests on Super Mario Brothers, and eight-year-olds were denouncing it, and I practically quote "this is a piece of shit". This was the attitude they were fighting.

The mere IDEA of gaming had become the preserve of uber-geeks waggling joysticks in their parent's garage.

Gaming was certainly on the way out, and the world wasn't about to let it back in. It took Nintendo fighting against every piece of advice, analyst and big corporation to drag gaming kicking and screaming back into the forefront, and it took their unique vision to see it could be sold as a fun toy to kids, rather than remain the preserve of freaks and geeks. Sure, anyone with that much balls could do it, but the fact is, after the many failures before, no one would, no one did, and no one thought ANYONE ever could again.

Preach it!

Hunter alien,

If anyone could do it, why didn't the Microsoft-led and Sony-backed MSX build the Japanese game market and resurrect the American one?

Indeed