I've noticed some arguments that third-party contributions will go up, something that I believe is inevitable. But some claim that this will result from those companies going near bankrupt from not developing on the Wii.

The question is how will this lead to quality titles on the Wii? Financialy-troubled developers are likely to take the smallest amount of risk possible and go for what sells the most for least financial risk and cost. The games will likely sell enough for the developers, but will be undesired of by many.

Opinions? Note, this is not a topic about a lack of quality titles so don't post lists, but rather opinions.

In short: 3rd party Wii support will keep increasing. There will be great games. And more of them too. Unfortunately, tons of crap too. Kinda unavoidable.

To put it lightly, you've taken some extreme circumstances to get some extreme outcomes.

3rd party support is better then last year apart from zack and wiki the rest were crap, this year we already had no more heroes, boom blox and blast works, coming soon de blob, deadly creatures, tenchu 4,tales etc

It was a matter of time until 3rd parties shifted resources for the Wii. No one believed it would be this successful. When you see games selling so poorly, it means someone is doing something wrong. I think 3rd party devs should start advertising their games, and not let them die on the shelves.

In all investments the 'standard' way to limit risk is to diversify ...

It has been said by many respected people in the industry that development costs for Wii games are 1/2 to 1/4 the cost for similar HD games; and you should also consider that the typical budget for a "Standard" game is probably 1/2 to 1/4 that of a Big Budget game (with low budget games being noticeably less than a standard game). Now this means that for a Standard HD game you can potentially produce a Big Budget Wii game, or a couple Standard Wii games and multiple low budget Wii games; similarly for the cost of one Big Budget HD game you can produce a couple Big Budget Wii games, several standard Wii games, and a lot of low budget Wii games.

To demonstrate what I mean by Big Budget, games like Metal Gear Solid 4 and Grand Theft Auto 4 were rumored to cost in the $60 to $100 Million range to develop whereas a more typical HD game would cost $20 to $40 Million (and a low budget HD game may be in the $5 to $10 Million range); in contrast a $20 to $40 Million Wii project would be a massive project, $5 to $10 Million would be much more typical, and low budget Wii games are probably in the $1 to $2 Million range.

I wonder how the industry would be like without MS's/Sony's payments to third parties. Would they be able to develop the games they're developing, and survive?

A lot of companies making HD games are subsidized by those companies' pockets, of that I'm sure.

Give it time. The next wave of good developers is still in its infancy at this point. And just like the PC game giants of the late 1980s were unreliable when it came to NES games, you cannot count on the console game giants of the 1990s and early 2000s to provide good content for the Wii. The situation is very similar: the developers in both cases are used to a very different set of terms for what makes a game "sell". And in both cases, what makes a game "sell" is much simpler and very different than what they've been working with for a decade or more.

Some of you posted lists of upcoming titles even though I pointed out that wasn't the topics purpose.

@Happy
True, cheaper development lowers the level of risk involved..

@NJ5
Some are definietley subsidized, however some payments are just for exclusivity...

Payments for exclusivity work too... It all goes into the same bucket ;)