Nintendo's dominance in Japan will help them worldwide. Not only are they winning, but they are going to win by a large margin, and very early. Every game that appeals to a Japanese audience is going to be tough to keep away from the Wii.

I think the issue is that everyone believes that we'll see a PS1-like attrittion of top titles to Wii-exclusivity. Please name one game that's sold 1,000,000 copies worldwide that's getting it's franchise sent to Wii-only. My point? The major trend is that companies are jumping single-system exclusivity left and right. Thus far, the only major game I can think of switching is Dragon Quest IX. Outside of that, any game has been announced on 360 from PS3, vice versa, or going all 3. HappySquirrel - I never said, nor ever will say, that the 360 stands a chance to even get within 15m of the global leader, whomever it is. I do feel, however, that the 360 will win with a pretty decent lead in the US, primarily because regardless, the 360 DOES have a year on the Wii that gave it 3m unit sales, and might end up having another 6mo to 1 and 1/2 years before the Wii is re-done to a new model. Yes, I agree it's near impossible to compare platformers to FPSes, but you can look at trends and see that FPSes, love it or hate it, have started to do better within the past 3 years. I don't remember Doom and Quake, for all they were worth, selling to the likes of old platformers like Super Mario.

Unlike the PS3 and XBox 360 few developers devoted their best teams to Wii projects initially so there won't be many really high quality third party titles in 2007; most of the known third party titles are rapid ports of games or projects that were designed around what developers thought the Wii's userbase would be. Since E3 2006 (and with how well the Wii has sold to date) it is likely that established teams are now working on original Wii projects that will be released in 2008. This 'movement' of developers will primarily hurt the PS3 because it is likely that publishers who have been burned by releasing games exclusively to the PS3 (Namco with Gundam Musou comes to mind) are likely going to reassign these teams to producing Wii projects; with how much smaller a Wii development team is it is plausable that these existing PS3/XBox 360 teams may be broken into smaller Wii teams with varied results.

Check the worldwide sales of Red Steel and Raymond Rabbit from here first !! They break one million already ! The platformer is a complete different audience to FPS. Platformer is much more easy to get the light and non gamer while compare to FPS. So let see how these two title performs after they release for 6 months. For the console, I really doubt if 360 can reach the level that Wii did in America consider they are focus more on core gamer while the population is far less than the light and non gamer. Wii is a phenomenal hit all over the world including America. I believe Wii will surpass 360 in America by the end of this year if their production can up 100% in 2nd half. Let's see the result at that time ! 

Louis, care to give me numbers to explain Rayman and Red Steel? Sales are nowhere near 1m for either game. Shipments? Maybe. Sales? Nowhere near. Both are lucky to be around 750k each. And my point was: name a franchise that is a Wii exclusive that just became announced within the past year. The reason I mention this is that 3rd party titles do great in the US by companies like EA, Activision, S-E, Ubisoft, Edios, ect. However, none of these companies have announced a major, or atleast mid-major game to be on the Wii only. Likewise, there is more Wii dev support, but again, it's not in actual known franchises, but IPs. The closest thing the Wii will get this year is Manhunt 2. Outside of that, I can't think of any for 2008 that are going to be Wii exclusive.

This is a very good point. I often wonder why we dont hear more about a shift in dev support. The only reason I can think of is maybe they just dont want to show their hands to the competition this early in the game, and have already done a major shift.

It would be a financial mistake not to be giving Wii the most support. If the current trend holds up Wii will have over 50% of the market WW by the end of the year.

Well, we have seen the shift in developer support being that we have had at least one new game announced every week for awhile now; and pretty much every publisher in the world has said that they're increasing their support for the Wii. Why this hasn't translated into the kinds of games mrstickball is talking about is that the top titles take time to develop. On the PS2/XBox/Gamecube/Wii your major game franchises (Halo, Metal Gear, Mario, Metroid, Zelda, Final Fantasy) usually take at least 18 to 24 months to produce and are usually not demonstrated until they are about 1 year into development.

What this means is that if after the launch of the Wii a company decided to create a major Wii title and started development on January 1st 2007, we would probably not know about it unitl January 1st 2009 and it wouldn't be released until Q2/Q3 2008 (or later).

My comments like this, MrStickball in italic

Just a few notes:

I DO believe the 360 will beat out the Wii this generation based on a few reasons:

Just to be 100% sure we are talking about USA only here, because honestly their is no way that xbox360 will sell more than Wii WW.

1. The primary reason is the fact that I believe year-wise, the 360 will live a longer life vs. the Wii. Even if the Wii does great, I think, at most, it'll get 5 years before a major overhaul. Right now, the 360 is looking at 6-7 years until a succuessor is launched, and MS has already indicated that they're not going to "Xbox" the 360 and kill the platform off. IMO, the Xbox, had it of recieved more support post-360 launch (like, actually have a factory produce the friggin' system), it would of sold an 500k systems in the US.

If xbox360 will get two years longer lifespan than Wii it should sell more, the problem I see is that no system that hasn't won early has stayed for a long time. If this would be true this time I don't know. The major problem I see for a really long support is it's weak performance in EU and Japan. In Sweden at least the price for the premium is almost the same as Wii, so it can't only be the price that is holding it back. I think that xbox360 could start selling more in EU if it got better hardware quality, myself is waiting for a new edition with better reability.

[EDIT] I failed to point out, xbox360 has already wasted one year of it supposely longer life than Wii. As I see it Wii will easily sell for 5 years before Wii 2 or whatever [/EDIT]

2. You can say "oh, SSB, SMG and MP3 are going to out-duel the holy 360 trinity of GTAIV, H3, and whatever #3 is between ME, Madden or Bioshock
, but the numbers just don't work.

Here should a lot of date be, that is totally correct but missing one important thing it was removed because I didn't want to make a to long post. The only thing wrong is to only cont one of the Zelda TP. As far as I know Zelda TP GC has sold more than one million.

I think the major problem with your argumetation is that you miss the number one game Nintendo will have and is already having: Wii Sport. The more I speak with people the more I understand the power of Wii Sport. Last friday another department at my work actualy spend a whole night playing Wii Sport against each other. Today at work we talked about Wii and I was shocked when I realised that for the casual crowd and mostly for women at my work Wii is equal to Wii Sport. The most intressting thing is that they seem to think it is really really fun. I personally belive that Wii Sport might have the power as a pack in as Super Mario once had.

Also, arguing how well a platformer will do vs. FPS, will reveal the fact that platformer sales have kind of been on the decline vs. FPS. One only can question how that'll effect SMG.

I agree but as stated before Mario, Metroid isn't what is going to drive the sales. Those games is only there to get the faithfull fans on board. Rest is pulled in by Wii Sport and other more simplistic games. Wii is going directly for the casual and I think they will strike gold. This is the important thing to note here: No plattform has ever won without the casual crowd.

I also think 2D plattforms is coming back, at least WW where insane sales of New Super Mario Bros has been seen.

Finally, I wonder: Has Nintendo even confirmed ALL 3 games are coming out this year?

Don't know but I do know that they aren't as important than the Wii X series.

For a final idea on this discussion:

Again I will point out one important thing. The power of new franshises, as Halo showed for xbox, a new title can be gold worth if it is made well and market well. Not only that it could be worth a LOT if it is market against some demographic that isn't playing or belived that they ever would buy a consol. Two games that comes to my mind is Singstar for PS2 and Nintendodogs for DS. I think that GC already showed that you couldn't realy on old titles to gain market share. You had to look at other markets to win and that I think is the most important thing here.

and one last thing, are you still reading ?

How much do we belive that xbox360 will increase it sales during the release of Halo3. The reason why I ask is simply because I do think Wii wont stop selling because of the realese of Halo3 nor GTA.

uh, rayman has sold nearly 500k in the US alone and has done very well in europe with another 75k in Japan. It has had really good legs and if it hasn't reached a million yet it will within a couple months. Red steel isn't far behind and will reach a million this year for sure.