Okay, so I have noticed a lot over the past couple of years that the fact that the Nintendo Wii finished at the top of 7th Generation Video Game Console sales has had a polarizing effect on people when discussing that generation.  The people who refuse to accept that the Wii won last gen try to find their own ways to ignore or discredit its accomplishment.  It gets called a "gimmick", a "fad", a "casual console", a "kiddy console", or a "toy".  Anything except for what it actually was, a video game console.  Because, at the end of the day, it's primary function was to play video games.  Anyways, the "toy" reference when leveled as what's supposed to be an insult is particularly funny to me, because when you get right down to it with that logic, they are all toys.  Toys are something that get played with.  Do you "play" games on PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One?  Yes.  Well then, I guess they are all toys too if that's how you want to look at it.  You can't have it both ways.  "But, Wii had kiddy games!  PlayStations and XBoxes have hardcore games!"  Did PlayStation have Rug Rats games selling in excess of 3 million plus each?  Check.  Do they all have LEGO games?  Check.  Does Sony exclusively own the SingStar franchise?  Check.  (Yeah, SingStar's not hardcore.)  As for hardcore games, the Wii did have some succesful "hardcore" games (by successful I mean sold over a million copies each or sold comparably well to its competition). 

Prime example, the Wii version of Call of Duty 3 was the 2nd highest selling version of it's release:

Call of Duty: World at War while behind XBox 360 and PS3 versions still sold close to 2 million units, which is not too shabby for a console that supposedly only sells Mario games:

Despite not getting Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (which is where the series really exploded on Xbox 360 and PS3), there were also a couple of other Call of Duty titles that topped the million mark in sales as well.

The Wii edition of Resident Evil 4 outsold it's Gamecube predecessor and was it's second highest selling iteration:

Madden NFL 07 and 08 both sold on par with their PS3 counterparts:

Okay, but what about total software?  Where does Wii's legacy stand in that regard?  Here is how the Wii stacked up against its competitors:

XBox 360

Wii

PS3

Now, many will argue that Wii's software sales are loaded with bundles, but that only explains away sales to a certain point.  If I were to add up every title people claim only sold because of bundles, I'd have to infer that the Wii actually sold 200 million units instead of 101 million!  So, even if you take away 100 million units and say "these must have been bundled", you still have over 800 million in software sales.  And, how does that total stack up to another console that sold 100 million+ units lifetime?:

PlayStation

It looks like the Wii software sales stack up pretty favorably to me.  My conclusion, is that clearly the Wii moved software.  I don't know why people choose to be in denial of it success in hardware sales or software sales.  Of course, 1st Party titles were more successful on Wii than 3rd Party offerings.  1st Party titles are and always have been Nintendo's strength.  But, to say that anything that wasn't Mario related did not sell on Wii is a broad generalization, and an untrue one at that.  What if I were to look at PS3's 9million+ software sellers and refer to it as the Call of Duty/Grand Theft Auto only console?

PlayStation 3

Looking at that list through a narrow-minded perspective, that's what I'd be forced to assume.  Of course, there are those who wouldn't even mind to say that.  Because, it's "cool" to be the console that is dominated by mindlessly shooting things and blowing stuff up.  Which is fine.  I personally like all types of games, including those.  But to write-off Wii's hardware and software sales and claim that it was somehow non-contributing to the video game industry as a whole is revisionist history at its finest.  What are your thoughts?

Wow, there is a lot going on in your post. How about I start with this:

"Dispelling the myth that Wii did not move software" - Who actually said that the Wii didn't move software? I don't think anyone disputes this.

A few things :

-Big 3rd party releases generally sold poorly for Wii after around 2009 (even before depending on series, with some notable exceptions from time to time)

-3rd party support fell off steeply due to the poor sales of Wii ports of those titles (big AAA shootbang/racing/etc)

-Overall Wii SW sales were lifted by a combo of shovelware, song/dance kind of stuff, and the awesome mainline Nintendo franchise stuff. This is counterbalanced by poor/terrible sales of well reviewed but poorly selling non-Nintendo RPGs/etc.

-The market at large for non-casual gaming was long gone to PS360 by 2010. I don't mean this in a derogatory fashion, and it bears mentioning that both the PS3 and 360 had their fair share of super casual song/dance/waggle junk as well. It just happens that the big tentpole releases outside of Mario/Zelda/Smash/Kart were all missing on the Wii for the most part, and those that did show up that didn't fall into the song/dance/waggle category sold horribly on Wii.

Add it all together, and you can see why people look at the Wii for what it is, despite the total numbers showing a ton of SW sold overall. The middle ground would be stuff like the Lego and Skylanders stuff, which sold well on all 7th gen consoles, but didn't suffer terribly on the Wii like most big releases did post '09ish.

The Wii was a monster moving software, but it was even a bigger beast moving Nintendo software. It's only by comparison to that the other publishers don't move as much software.

Sorry but this thread looks a little biased. Why did you include ps2 sales for COD 3 and RE4 but not for Madden 07(wich sold 4.49 million against 0.49 million on Wii). Also why is X360 not included(2.36m for madden 08). Also only games from early in the gen.

And you also have to take install base into account. As said above after 09 multi platform titles started selling less on Wii, while the install base was much bigger.

I'm sorry but I don't get this reasoning. Mind explain further. 

As recently as yesterday, which inspired this thread:

"petroleo said:

The Wii was an a atrocity to game developers and to the game industry in general, yes it sold like hell but to which audience ?, games weren't selling, only Marios and Pokemons were selling there, so selling millions Wii didn't mean nothing to the game industry, it actually was hurting"

Well, it can be a bit difficult to fully consolidate the between the lines reality in a quick forum post, but the Wii did in my opinion get some semblance of big 3rd party multiplats for a period of time. Thanks to the co-marketing bonanza fueled largely by Microsoft but also Sony, along with perhaps a combination of risk aversion and poor confidence by 3rd parties, it wasn't as good as it could have been. Still, here are some of the Wii's 3rd party games of the early years :

COD3

NFS Carbon

Far Cry Vengeance (shrug)

Price of Persia : Rival Swords

Mortal Kombat Armageddon

Madden 07/08/09/10/11/12/13

NBA Live etc

Fifa etc

Tiger Woods etc

NHL etc

Sims etc

Tomb Raider Anniversary and Underworld

Bully by Rockstar

Star Wars Force Unleashed stuff

Call of Duty : WaW (Nov 2008)

NFS : Undercover

Call of Duty 4 : MW

Call of Duty Blops (the last?)

and more. I'm leaving some out, but the trend is pretty much there. The 3rd parties were kind of willing to give some releases a shot in the 2006-2008 timeframe. After that it was mostly sports, and the expected shovelware. It's just that the shovelware is absolutely staggering on the Wii. I mean just look at this :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wii_games

It drowns out the majority of the library. For every twenty or fifty games like this :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Cheer_2

You see one game like this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Ckami

I almost feel like creating a list of shovelware and casual garbage from the Wii library, but I feel like it would break the internet.

The PS360 got a fairly sizable number of crapware releases as well, but the scale and breadth of junk on the Wii is astonishing. I still maintain that the gems on the Wii (many 9/10s or even 10/10s depending on your view, almost 100% exclusives from the big N themselves though) make it a very worthwhile system regardless, but facts are facts.

Has it occured to you that your post partially backs-up what Petroleo said?  

He said 3rd party games sold terribly on the Wii - and they did, especially after the first couple of years.  That was his point.  This alienated a ton of the market and set-up Nintendo for a terrible follow-up.

Now I do not agree at all that the Wii hurt the market lol.  It expanded it and brought the idea of alternative ways to game at the forefront of everyones thoughts.  Those are only good things.