Amusing, because these figures include marketing costs. I think we can all agree that marketing requires the least effort of all, known to be able to increase sales without any additional developoment work, and is more representative of greed over effort. Additionally, many of these are multiplatform games, which drive up costs as well, it's not really a solid comparison to first party games only.

Your list of criteria that comprise a "good game" is dissapointing to me. My metric is quality and, more importantly, novel gaming experiences, of which Nintendo excels at. If you truly believe that "effort" is only apparent when designing a large overworld or photorealistic environments, I doubt any common sense could move you to a more realistic view, so I'll not bother (though Final Fan sure has tried, bless him). However, consider the "effort" required to maximise the use of available resources when making a game, have a look at the effort required to fit a game like Super Mario World onto a small cart, the pallette swapping techniques employed etc. and begin to understand that "effort" has many, many forms.

As for your home-made crtieria for generations (and even retro or mini-games), they are completely bunk. How often have you had to explain your own definitions of these words to others? How often has there been confusion? Because until today, I've always understood and have been understood perfectly fine when using these terms. This should be a huge indication to you that something's up. I could call carrots potatoes all I like, and even defend my position when someone tries to correct me, but if noone else uses the same terminology as me, and a quick reference check shows wikipedia/encyclopedia/dictionary entries corroborating everyone else's viewpoints, then I'd have to accept I was wrong. As you are.

Incorrect. The entire available library is important, because the entire library is used when making the decision to buy a console. Sure, a particular game (such as Mario 3D World) could be the killer app that wins people over, but it is the cumulation of games over the lifespan of the console that show its value to consumers.

A few core forum fans yes, your casual consumer? No way.

Of course the available games are a part of a consoles draw, to say otherwise is ridiculous.

It's also part why the previous gen consoles will still sell (to the casual consumer as well, mind you), despite most games now appearing on current gen consoles. The old and large game library adds value to the old systems.

2a3a. 
I'm willing to believe that list is accurate in its numbers but it is extremely incomplete.  $2 million may have been a bigger budget than any other game made in 2000, maybe not; but certainly many games made nowadays exceed that cost, inflation adjusted.  One of many examples of Nintendo games I am sure exceed that cost is Super Mario Galaxy, but I cannot cite official numbers backing up this assessment.  All I was able to find of SMG's budget was a person here on VGC that claimed that in E3 2009 Nintendo said they'd spent $20 million on Super Mario Galaxy.  If it was 20 million, that would be less than half of the Halo 3 budget reported in that list, a game that came out at around the same time.  On the other hand, SMG is not multiplayer, and not an "HD" game, both of which add a lot of cost to game development. 

Note:  It was estimated by a website that average quality Wii games turned a profit by 400 thousand units sold, and a Nintendo representative said they profited well before 1 million.  This leads to estimates that those Wii games could have been budgeting 2 to 4 million dollars.  Obviously Nintendo could expect to sell more than half a million units of their flagship title and budget more.  Without more information I can't say exactly where Nintendo's biggest Wii games land on that list but I can confidently say it's not at the bottom. 

2a3b. 
I'm sorry if "great atmosphere" is something that can't be converted easily into numbers for your mental well-being.  But do you deny that, if it is true, it can contribute to a game being "deep"? 

Since I'm talking about this, let me clarify a couple of things:  one, I reserve the right to add more evidence of depth if I choose; two, the comment about the "originality" of the combat system was less about depth and more in response to your claims of Nintendo being a lazy developer; three, a good combat system only contributes to a game's depth IMO by keeping you immersed in the game—if you are being annoyed by a clunky combat system then you are being thrown out of the game experience; four, good graphics alone don't make a game deep but it can enable depth with good artwork, creatures, level design etc. that combine to create a deep gameplay experience. 

2a4b2. 
I was able to use the "view cached" option to see that the 100km was talking about a completely different game, Brütal Legend.  I don't blame you for not knowing how to do this, but if you had PAID ATTENTION to the result you found you would have known that the result was on Metroid Prime 2:  Echoes and NOT the original Metroid Prime that I was talking about. 

2a4b3. 
I think I'm not doing the same thing.  I'm showing examples to prove a point, very specific examples that can be easily double checked by you.  This is only illustrated by the ease with which you pointed out to me that my examples were in fact wrong!  (With Joy Ride.  Spore isn't a JRPG, and I don't mean becasue EA isn't a Japanese company.  Actually, is it an RPG at all?  It's really not much like Pokemon at all IMO, and I'm not sure why you thought it was.) 

On the other hand, you tell me several qualities (or quantities) that a game can have, some of them very hard to reliably research, and challenge me to a list war, with the implication that you "win" the argument if I don't run out and do a shitload of difficult research. 

Simulators can be considered a genre IMO.  Train simulators and flight simulators are obviously vey different games but it's they're different things in the same type to me. 

Let's go back to your original list. 
1.  "foto-realistic environments"—Originally I took this to mean realistic graphics.  Now I know that you meant "environments based on replicating a real life area".  I think this is a retarded way to judge the quality of a game developer, but fine:  Ken Griffey, Jr. Presents Major League Baseball.  I believe I previously mentioned Waialae Country Club True Golf Classics.  Also, as I just found out after writing in point 9 of this list, Goldeneye 007. 
2.  "fully editable levels"—Another dumb way to measure the quality of a game developer, and extremely difficult to research if you don't already know the answer. 
3.  "simulating gameplay" as in simulating real life activities or things like trains.  Can I count Ken Griffey again?  Nintendo made several of them. 
4.  "area bigger than 300km2" difficult to research
5.  "gameplay with at least 100 variants (players/characters/cars/etc. behaving differently according to their skills/specs)" dumb measure of quality because of the fact that not all types of game call for this kind of multitude of similar-but-different "variants".  I think this is also a pretty hard to research quantity for many games, however it's just occurred to me that when it comes to sports games you can cheat a bit.  Let's take Ken Griffey Jr. again.  Based on the Wikipedia article, there appear to be at least least 27 teams in the game.  Since you need 9 players on a side in baseball, it can be presumed that the game has at least 9x27 players.  Boom, hundreds.  NBA Courtside 2002 also qualifies. 
6.  "content expandable with features created by gamers (area, levels, objects, game modes, etc.)"—I believe I already mentioned Mario Paint; after looking at the original condition I can say that it definitely qualifies.  And from what I've heard of Wii Music it does as well.  But I think this is another one that would be hard to research; I just happen to know a couple that fit. 
7.  "online matches with more than 100 players at the same time"—I guess you mean hundreds in the same game, instead of hundreds online in general.  Why is this a measure of game quality?  And how am I supposed to research this?  I can know about games like this through reputation like MAG and Warhawk, but if I don't already know about it how can I find out? 
8.  "massive motion capture movements of actors"—This is a lot like the "photorealistic" environments quality, and at least as retarded a way to judge a game developer.  And even harder to research, at least when it comes to "this game has realistic humans acting realistically in the game but how can I tell whehter they used motion capture?"  NBA Courtside 2 Featuring Kobe Bryant had motion capture, but I don't know whether it was "massive" enough for you. 
9.  "story performed with character replicated from reality (bodies, movements, faces, voices, life habits, etc.)."—I don't see how this could possibly reflect a game maker's quality, But Ken Griffey Jr. steps up to the plate once again.  Goldeneye 007 had some too. 

As you can see, I obejct to at least half of your criteria on the basis of difficulty of research.  Many of your criteria are slanted towards specific genres.  For example, a "realistic" sports game would be much more likely to have hundreds of different players than a fictionalized one.  When Nintendo did do franchised sports games, they had as many "gameplay variants" as anybody.  In fact, KGJMLB "was groundbreaking and had a long list of features for its time", according to Wikipedia.  But Mario Golf doesn't need to have 1000 different golfers when 950 of them are going to be Goomba #107 or Toadstool #93 or whatever.  If you'd like to compare fictional-character sports games, we could try Super Mario Strikers versus Mega Man Soccer.  I can't find out the comparative roster sizes quickly via the Internet, but I could go fire up my copies since I actually own both of those games, if the results would actually be valuable.  I don't want to do that much work to find out you think it's irrelevant. 

2a4b4a.
Au contraire, my knowledge of Nintendo games is most certainly not encyclopedic.  You overestimate me, which is both flattering and unexpected.  In fact, most of the matches to your criteria listed above were found by going through lists on Wikipedia and then following the links to games that seem like they could plausibly match.  Even though I'd played Goldeneye, I wasn't sure its game areas were real life locations until I saw confirmation on Wikipedia.  And even though I obviously knew that it featured characters from the movie who are obviously real people, I didn't think about the fact that that fit your criteria until while I was writing this post. 

2a4a4b.  "Do you think a paint is a level?"
I don't even know what you're trying to say here, but I can tell for sure that you don't know what I'm talking about.  Mario Paint fits the criterion of creating content, in this case by:  composing music; creating an animation that you can play back at various speeds, with sound effects; yes, making a painting (which is totally your own creation, not like a coloring book or whatever); and more. 

2b1. 
Actually, no, I don't.  To get 100 players with different stats all you have to do is plug different numbers into a character creator, or in FFT's case randomly generate some.  To get 100 minigames, you have to actually make them, even if they are simple.  That's not to say that a lot of work doesn't go into making a lot of characters in a game.  In Final Fantasy games you often have a huge number of players and a lot of work does go into making them all individuals with their own history, presonality, appearance etc.  And the Gran Turismo series puts a lot of work into modeling a bajillion different cars.  But the number doesn't prove that work happened.  You have to look into the game, know it, see the work that was done.  But that's not as objective. 

2b2. 
You misunderstood me.  There isn't a "Sudoku" Brain Age game, and ten other Brain Age games that I was lumping together.  There was one Brain Age game I was talking about that had at least 50 Sudoku puzzles and all the other stuff. 

4.  I thought about responding to this, but there's nothing to say. 

The casual consumer would go by what games they have heard of or what games are on sale in the store.  I know you say that your local store has only 5 Wii U games or something like that but that just isn't representative; anyway my point is that if Mario Kart DS was on store shelves for the entire lifespan of the Nintendo DS, you can't dismiss the possibility of games more than 6 months old influencing the purchasing decisions of the "casual consumer". 

How can I not say that it is "likely" that Ghosts outsold all Wii U software in the UK?  While my original statement was only focusing on retail sales, it is still likely that Ghosts sold software than the Wii U did physically and digitally this past week in the UK.  Regardless, the statement was in opposition to the idea that Wii owners were too busy buying back catalog software to pick up Call of Duty.  Considering the top two selling games last week were bundled, 3-6 were somewhere in the 800-2000 range, and 7-10 were less than 800, the numbers we have paint a pretty clear picture that Wii U owners didn't pick up a bunch of other software instead of CoD.  Maybe WiiU owners in the UK are buying millions of copies of Pikmin on the eshop, but none of the data we have available would suggest that.

Further proof that Nintendo is an industry to itself. http://bit.ly/1boho7y  Check out the comment section for actual insight into the 'real' industry and why Sony and Microsoft's new machines aren't a safe bet as the Western media portrays them to be.

I love it when a bonafide comic relief starts implying that I dont understand sarcasm. Bringing up AC3 and Batman:AC to prove your point?

If anything, AC3 actually proves MY point. A heavily advertised, superhyped game selling itself as a masterpiece but is merely an average game with great production values. B:AC? A game originally released on the market more than 12 months before it hit WiiU? Okey, i think we're done here. Move along, move along...

Nintendo moving just 6.3 million software for the Wii U in Q2 and Q3 combined, globally, would suggest that your train of thought is pretty reasonable.

Also, POE, you need to make up your mind and answer my simple question; has the Wii U in fact had a software drought leading to low sales or does it have a strong line-up fully able to compete with the PS4 and One, as well as the PS3 and the 360? This is pretty much a lose-lose scenario for your argument.