Just looking at Japan alone, the success of the Nintendo DS caused software sales to go from 35,000,000 units of software to 64,000,000+ units of software; Nintendo did take the lion's share of those sales (20,000,000) but there was still 10,000,000 units worth of growth that was split between third parties.

The Wii and DS have been highly successful with the core-gamer demographic, but the real value to third parties is the potential of these systems to expand the market; Nintendo's success means that these developers and publishers will have a smaller percentage of a larger pie which is good for them.

This is good, Nintendo's success will clear away the weak developers, and leave only the strong, forced evolution

Or maybe they will just shift their emphasis to the 360/PS3. The same thing happened with the N64 and Gamecube, albeit they were not doing as well as the Wii is. Developers will either step it up and try to be more creative in hopes that they will do better, continue to sell poorly, or continue to release "casual", easy to produce games on the Wii and produce their big guns for the 360/PS3 even though development costs are higher.

akuma587 said: Or maybe they will just shift their emphasis to the 360/PS3. The same thing happened with the N64 and Gamecube, albeit they were not doing as well as the Wii is. Developers will either step it up and try to be more creative in hopes that they will do better, continue to sell poorly, or continue to release "casual", easy to produce games on the Wii and produce their big guns for the 360/PS3 even though development costs are higher.

 Then they'll continue to lose money, as Nintendo grabs more of the software marketshare for its titles

Nintendo has been kind of hostile towards third parties, even this generation. Not allowing them to do online, not opening the Miis up to them, forcing them to use seperate Wii online handles for individual games, among other things. They have helped them by keeping development costs down though. They do need to adapt to the Wii, I agree, but I think no matter what Nintendo does they are less friendly to 3rd parties than Microsoft and Sony because they are exclusively a game company that cannot afford to lose profits.

Third-party developers can be successful on Nintendo systems with large install bases -- clearly nobody begrudged the presence of first-party titles during the NES and SNES era. The N64 and Gamecube suffered from a lot of poor third-party titles (remember the endless wrestling game iterations on N64?) and Nintendo's quality efforts ended up dominating the charts on those platforms. Nintendo understands the Wii and put its faith in it before anyone else even knew what they were up to -- and their software releases right now show the results of that investment. Third parties are working to catch up at the moment, but Sega, EA, Ubisoft, Activision and Atlus all have successes to show for their effort. I still maintain that the bigger the install base, the better for third parties in the long run... to be mercenary about it, a mediocre game can still sell enough to be profitable, and the blockbusters will TRULY be blockbusters. Whereas on a struggling platform, the expectation is that your game will be so great people will buy the system just to play it. At least that has to be the goal if you spent too much on development and still hope to make a profit on the investment.

Developers who focus on Wii will be rewarded. I keep seeing all these PS3/360 announcments, and have to scratch my head. A lot of developers are going to just be crippled this generation, when they continue betting a huge amount of money on PS3 and 360 somehow magically recovering. Even Ubisoft is being stupid. They brought two big games to Wii right away, but have brought crapware since then, and don't have any big Wii exclusives coming up except rumored sequels to those two initial hits. EA looks to be the company finally catching on. Of the 6 new or revamped IPs they are debuting this year, 4 of them are Wii/DS exclusives (Boogie, EA Playground, MySims, Spielberg Wii project). They're also bringing most of their major sports titles over, some for the first time. Sega may be catching on, and little guys like Hudson and Majesco have the right idea. Projects like Dewy's Adventure, Trauma Center and Soul Calibur Legends are look like smart moves, and I hope they pay off. With luck, there will be some fresh blood this generation, as dumb developers waste money on doomed systems, and fresh new developers step up to the plate and challenge Nintendo's games. Nintendo has been busy inventing whole new genres of gameplay, and I'd like to see some third parties get ballsy and do the same thing. When you look at the third parties who succeeded with Nintendo back in the NES/SNES days, they weren't the ones bringing lame Nintendo-imitation mascot-oriented platformers, they were the ones bringing gameplay unlike what Nintendo was, most prominently Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy and Street Fighter.

TalonMan said: ckmlb said: The so called big flood of huge 3rd party games to Wii still hasn't come even though it's clear that it is selling more than the other two consoles now, anyone wonder why that is? I mean all the new games announced are small quick cash ins that look terribly made and are really unappealing to the average video gamer. But this will change... ...you've got to remember, almost ALL of the 3rd parties were caught with their pants down when Nintendo was showing off the Wii at the last E3. Many of them admitted to having dismissed the Wii before E3, and afterwards, having to ramp up and switch gears to start pumping out Wii games.

No, it won't change. Developers have had plenty of time to observe the Wii and the kind of people who want it, and they're still shunning the Wii. Another good announcement today, with the upcoming Chronicles of Riddick to be on the 360 and PS3. The Wii is just too weak to attract the heavy hitters. It'll get the Nintendo games, a handful of decent multiplatform games, and a tremendous amount of totally crap shovelware.

 

N00b, are you telling me that missing out on what will probably be a crappy tie-in shovelware game is a bad thing?

It's really up to third parties to put their A teams on projects for the Wii and DS. If they're banking on the 360, PS3, and PSP than they're seriously limiting their potential to grow as companies. Like it or not, Nintendo is probably going to own the industry practically for the next few years, expecially as far as Japan and most of Europe. Theoretically if third parties joined hands and did give up Nintendo would only make more money as their games would sell to people without third party options. People aren't buying Nintendo systems for third party games, but if there are good ones there they'll buy them once they have it.