3rd party sales suck on both PS3 and Wii right now since neither have good exclusives so everyone's just buying the 360/PS2 versions.

I think it's far more complicated than just who has the highest installed base in a specific country (Japan which isn't even the largest market).  See my post in the game budgets thread.  As a quick example though if your company was making a first person shooter would you even care what the sales in Japan were?  Historically first person shooters have sold horribly in Japan so in that kind of example Japan likely would be considered an afterthought at best.  Also simply to say "it's cheaper" to develop on the Wii doesn't take into account *a lot* of things.  For example Xbox 360 games are on average $10 higher in price than Wii games, this affects things more than you'd think.  Add to that Xbox Live's use of downloadable content for games which can be another source of revenue, etc.  And some games genres just sell better on one console than another because the fans of each console may prefer different things.  If everyone just used the *simple logic* of developing their games for the system with the highest installed base then every game except first party would be coming out for just one system which simply isn't the case and there are good reasons for it.

360 in Japan isn't going anywhere, but to say that's a reason to not develop for it is silly. Unless you've got a robot game or dating sim, 3/4 of your potential audience is outside Japan. As for the PS3, it will catch on once it gets a price drop and actual games, but again, Japan is not the determining factor. Then we get into another problem. Of this large market share, how much of it belongs to Nintendo? 83%. Despite the fact that Sony's getting slapped around in Japan and has a lot fewer games, total third party game sales are only 7% higher on Wii. If the system manages to reach DS levels, that's not really a big problem, but as it stands now, Nintendo's dominance is too pronounced for anyone to abandon the PS3. Both PS3 and 360 can hit $100 at some point. Pricing is definitely a factor in Japan, though the fact that they only get one game a month is also a big problem. As production steps up and the price comes down, the system will sell a lot better. Of all the strong publishers, who are they favoring? Sony. Best case for Nintendo would be getting equal support. Early lead or not, nobody's making any rash decisions.

The Japanese 360 games are gonna do a lot better in the US that's for sure, even games like Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey will do better here in sales... The PS2 hasn't even hit 100 dollars yet and it's been out for a long time.

I love this guy. More and more people are beginning to see things my way.

John Lucas 

Considering that's his first post ever here....I fail to see how he's "seeing it your way"

PS2 sold 1.4 million units in December and is consistently at or near the top console list. It doesn't need to drop to $100 yet.

Yes, everybody knows that America is the biggest market. So lets look at how the weekly nextgen console % are trending there.

I know that the 360 is currently kicking butt with the third parties. It should, they have well over twice the user base of the Wii, and weaker 1st/2nd party games competition compared to the compitition thirds have on the Wii. This isn't so much a question of how they are doing now, but how will they be doing in 12 to 18 months on games that they are now just starting. By that time the Wii will have a larger user base in all major areas of the world.

I guess it is a matter of opinion, on how things will look a year from now. This is what should matter to devs.

If you looked back six months did you really think the Wii would be this strong? And it is currently getting stronger with production finally ramping up. So now seeing how the Wii has been performing do you think it would be wise to bet against it?

Try doing % for software sales. Thats what matters to devs, not as much as the hardware sales. Did I think the Wii would do this well? Absolutely. I posted more than a year ago that the Wii would do very well. I predicted around 47.5m units sold when every single analyist said it would do around 20~27.5m units. However, just like I predicted that, I am predicting this: The Wii will have a great 2007, but peak in 2008 and somewhat into 2009 (atleast in Japan), and drop like a rock in 2010. The PS3/360 are fierce competitors unlike the GC and Xbox were last cycle.