Mehhh...

Maybe some devs tried too hard and invested too much money they never had the chance to get back and closed but I'm sure that we wouldn't have more people working in this industry if many companies wouldn't try to push for graphics.

We have many many people working for companies not pushing for graphics and we have many working for those who do. That's the good thing about the market nowadays, you have both and with that we see a huge number of game devs and employees.

I doubt we would have even more people working in this industry if EA, Ubisoft and some other companies wouldn't push for better graphics. Maybe we would have some more devs but these devs would have a smaller number of employees.

And a company like Crytek is in parts only really a big thing because of their graphics. If they fucked something up the last years doesn't change that they would have never even opened all the different studios without them releasing games like Crysis. 

We have probably also lost 90% of all car manufacturers which opened in the first 20 years when that market got big. That also doesn't mean much except for that it's a pretty normal thing that new industries often lose a lot of those who tried to be part of it and only a few big ones stay alive. 

I'm actually thinking of Kickstarter though. Some colleagues suggested that I start one. The issue I have with joining game studios today is that the ones in the US make games that I don't care to make. If I don't care about the games being made, I'm not going to put my effort into it and whatever work I do for that studio isn't going to be to their liking. 

Making something simple with meat to it is the best chance for an indie developer. To me, that's more appealing than working at a studio that makes AAA games that wants to focus on graphics. I'm thinking of starting up something small just to start. Even if I have to be the only developer on the team.

Whatever you like dude i just said you should go with something safer when people set them self up high but when they fail it's pretty bad just look at Mighty No 9 and what happened with that.

And trust me most studios take there time with gameplay and story then graphics there are few examples like Mirrors edge Catalyst And Crysis 2,3 Graphics powerhouses but sucked because Gameplay and story sucked everyone still knows Gameplay is king and Story is the Queen to put it like that.

Everyone can make a graphicly good game but when it lacks Gameplay and Story it's just meh and trust me most studios work on Gameplay and Story no matter how people try to spin it because when the game comes out when people review it most points go to Gameplay and Story graphics is just icing on the Cake.

You focused on one small point of the whole message, what about the rest?

SK did do very well on the Wii U anyway, launching on Wii U and PC at the same time (it was a console exclusive), and as for kickstarters Wii U was included in many 

Wii had even greater success with 3rd partys, this sites software sales have ample evidence of that, but again that can often depend on genre   

You originally wanted to know if Nintendo helped 3rd parties, the answer is they did, and many smaller 3rd parties took advantage of that help, just check Wii U's indie scene ( http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1172907 ), and Wii's software sales in some of it's core genres on this site  

The $91 billion number refers to gross sales.  Only a tiny fraction of that is profit.  Theoretically, the industry could experience sales of $500 billion, but make zero money.  

In reality, some of the big guys are profitable.  So, of that $91 billion, there was probably a few billion in profit "made" by developers and publishers. 

Lets think about something here.  If a game costs $100MM to develop, publish, distribute, and promote, that means the publisher needs to get $100MM back just to break even.  There's also the retailer that has to get paid.  So, Gamestop isn't paying $60 for games that they sell at $60.  Typically, retailers are paying about 50% of the selling price to acquire the goods that they sell.  In gaming, I imagine the retailers pay a bit more than that though.  So, lets say they pay 66% of the retail price to the publisher.  So, on a $60 game the publisher sees $40.  Just to break even, on a game with a total budget of $100mm, they must sell 2.5 million copies *at full retail* just to break even.  

Of course, many sales do not take place at that full retail price, once the game is 3-6 weeks old.  So, the real break even is probably more like 3-3.5 million units sold just to break even.  Then there's the fact that companies don't exist to break even.  They have to make a decent profit, in order to justify their existence and raise money for the next project.  That sounds like 4 million units of our theoretical game sold, just to turn a profit of a few million dollars on that $100MM investment.  

These big numbers are the reason that we see annual iterations on some franchises, and the disappearance of so many studios.  New IP is risky.  Bigtime.  

I absolutely agree with this, and I think it has been true since the start of the seventh generation of consoles. That is basically a decade now.

And it takes a fraction of that $100 million to make a mobile game for an installed base of a billion smart phones. $1 dollar from each of those billion smart phones is $1 billion dollars. Less risk and money from investors with a far greater profit margin making games for mobile devices.

Well it is the demand, Ubisoft tried with bringing rayman back. Secondly we also expect better looking games...The next main pokemon/mario/Zelda etc must be looking better.

Don't worry, in a few years this won't be an issue anymore. Great graphics won't be reason enough to sell any game very soon because the difference in AAA graphic presentation and indie will be indeterminably minute.