That's very charmingly innocent of you to think that major stock holders are not aware of what's going on and don’t have an influence. Consumer influence is less than you think and is slow in developing. Did Toyota call you up and ask you what kind of car you wanted made next year? Nope, me neither. If I owned about 5 or 10% of their stock do you think they would keep me in the loop?

This is going on the assumption that all stockholders for any given development company is on the board of directors or even significant percentage share holders. How incredibly assumptive of you. 

Obviously every game developer doesn't run their own focus groups for every title they publish (they gauge interest generated by the gaming press and by development events), but auto makers like Toyota regularly do. They find random samples of people to give their opinions on upcoming car line ups, who are typically reimbursed for their time. I have been contacted by automakers such as GM to participate in such focus groups. It's a commonly used research tool to measure consumer interest and opinion.

Of course the most important consumer influence for any company, automaker, game make or other, is ultimately what sells enough to generate profit and stimulate company growth.

As far as investors, or more commonly for the video game industry, stock traders and speculators are concerned, of course they're looking at the underlying financials as well as major forms of stimuli (like a hot IP expected to sell significantly). But those underlying financials are ruled by consumer driven sales figures, staying within budget and staying within time tables allotted. Sales figures being the bottom line. 

One thing investors look for is rapidly growing markets. One thing they hate is early fading (bad news for the Xbox). To an investor momentum is everything. They are always looking for a big wave to ride. You don’t stop current projects underway because you need to recoup the development costs. You do reevaluate future directions. Don’t think that process has started? Read between the lines. One game developer today said that there would not be any new high budget FPS in the future, because the market was too small. Hmm, which consoles practically live for big expensive FPS.

Developers both large and small typically follow the moving target in terms of marketable genres. Currently that still includes the FPS genre, static or shrinking. Shrinking being open to debate. When any given genre cools off overall in terms of unit sales or attachment rates, typically when there is a glut for a given genre, bloated by poorly realized examples, developers will eventually shift their efforts to something else. Some companies are slower to shift than others.

Capcom was slower in adjusting to 3D games from their previous strength of hand drawn animation back in the late 90's, but they were well aware of the deficiency and eventually they adjusted just fine.

This trend hasn't changed in the last couple decades of game development. 

By this time next year we’ll be up to our eyeballs in fitness games because when you can move $89 games like cotton candy, it will be noticed. It is just sinking in that Nintendo games are multimillion sellers not just because of Mario. I don’t give a rat’s ass about cute Italian plumbers; I buy almost every Nintendo game because they play well and look good.

Miyamoto was interviewed and asked why 3^rd party developers couldn’t compete with Nintendo. He said that it was obvious to them that most developers were putting in their third string team. He said Nintendo always used their first string. That pretty much matches my observations.

But don't take my word for it because you won’t anyway. Let's wait about six months and take another look. It will be a rather different landscape emerging.

In six months, we still won't be seeing first string dev teams assigned to third party Wii projects.

Even major contributors to the platform like Capcom will continue to allocate their efforts appropriately to what sells best for them as a company. Since they play all fields/platforms, until their Wii games start generating a larger percentage of their sales, this isn't going to change any time soon.

You are correct, it is not the shareholders. However, it is the publishers. They fund the project, they determine the direction of the project.

Publisher direction is the biggest cause of crapware in the entire industry. They waltz in, lay down the money and proceed to tell the developer how THEY want the game.

This doesn't mean they demand crappy graphics but they post impossible deadlines, underfund, alter development priorities and enforce TRC that at times just don't make sense.