No matter what happens, some people are way too cool for the Wii.

It is generally accepted practice (here) to count bundled games as sold too.

Wiisports was sold in Japan remember?

You have a lot of games that come bundled, Forza 2- Viva pinata - MGS4 - GTAIV - Uncharted - Heavenly sword etc. To try and seperate bundled from unbundled would be impossible. So as a generally accepted practice they have to be counted amongst all games sold.

That is why Wii Sports has to be included.  

I got that but most of the figures we're using here are US only since they are the most readily available. The 50 million in 18 months figures are all US and doesn't include Wii Sports but does include Wii Play.

Anyone want to try to run a script that tabulates the sales of each consoles software by publisher so we can get a god view of 1st vs 3rd party for all worldwide?

No thanks Viper, I would rather bandy about anecdotal evidence :P

Fact is, only considering the games released in the first 18 months of the Wii, the 1st party games recieved a MUCH higher average metacritic score than 3rd party Wii games. This is due to several reasons; no-one taking the Wii seriously until after the sales started rolling in, most 3rd party's inflexibility to these new ideas, and the sheer amount of ass that Nintendo games kick.

However, now that the Wii has such a high user base, and because alot of bad games flopped, developers are starting to put more effort into the Wii.

So with time, the 3rd party developers will make good games, and thus they will sell well.

Someone with way too much time on their hands, I offer you this challenge
Find the sales figures and average metacritic score for every single Wii game, and graph the former against the latter for 3rd party games, and again for 1st party games.

I believe that there would be a pretty damn good correlation between quality and sales.