Nintendo's relation with 3rd parties has historically been a bit... weird since the SNES era. I thought it would be worth a bit of effort looking back at the biggest successes on Nintendo's consoles for their past three generations. Besides, VGChartz doesn't have great data for the NES and SNES eras. So, let's take a look at the best selling 3rd party Nintendo console games since the SNES.

In total, 38 games have had 2 million or more sales on just a single Nintendo console.

Let's Look at the Top Publishers, based on their entires on this list:

Finally, a timeline:

Summary:

The Just Dance series is obviously the most sucessful 3rd party series on Nintendo consoles of the modern era, with four of the top five spots. This alone would make Ubisoft seemingly the greateest supporter of Nintendo consoles in recent times. The only comparison is with Sega, the only publisher with GameCube hits, in addition to their highly successful, if dimisnishing, Mario crossovers. In third place is Activision, with games like Guitar Hero, Call of Duty, and Skylanders.

Although 3rd party support has obviously declined since the Wii's golden era, the success of both Skylanders Giants and Just Dance 4 in 2012 suggests that 3rd party support remains stronger than in the N64 and GameCube eras. Possible eventual 3rd party hits of 2013 incluse Just Dance 2014, Call of Duty: Ghosts, Skylanders Swap Force, Sonic: Lost World, and Mario & Sonic 4.

Any thoughts? Does the sheer success of the Wii compared to the N64 and GameCube invalidate these numbers? I Just Dance really one of the most sucessful franchises in Nintendo history? How will the Wii U do?

I didn't know the Mario and Sonic games sold so well.

Ironically they are by far the most successful games starring Sonic :o

With the possible exception of Sonic 1, which I don't trust VGChartz's tracking of.

I've only played 6 games on that list so I can't really speak to the overall quality of the games mentioned, unfortunately. I do think the phenomenon that was Wii skews these numbers a bit. Wii U will probably be closer to the N64 days, with only a few high-selling third-party games. Although series like LEGO and Skylanders could continue to do quite well on Nintendo systems.

Really glad to see WCW vs. nWo: Revenge on there. Awesome game :)

I don't trust VGChartz tracking of anything prior to Gen VI either....

Third party support for the WiiU seems non-existent in 2014. It was far better on the N64, GC and Wii.

While obviously not getting nowhere near as much support as the PSOne, a large portion of the third-party titles for the N64 were exclusive for the system. At the time it seemed like games were either for the PSOne or the N64. Maybe it was due to the huge difference in power. LucasArts, Acclaim, Midway, THQ, EA and other US companies supported the system with a lot of unique software. Some of them were AAA titles even if they didn't sell like the biggest games do today. Japanese companies didn't give it much attention though.

With the GC most third-party games were multiplatform, and gamers in general obviously preferred buying them on the PS2.

Multiplatform Wii games were generally gimped ports. The exclusive third-party games were either shovelware, very casual or too niche too sell very well. Apart from Monster Hunter Tri and Dragon Quest X in Japan, I don't think there were any exclusive AAA third-party titles that appealed to core gamers. I'm sure Sonic Colors and Epic Mickey had pretty high budgets and expectations though.