Could Nintendo's stategy for the second half of this year really be to gain some long term stronger third party support for the Wii? This holiday season could be the perfect time for Nintendo to convince 3rd parties the Wii is a profitable platform to develop for. And what better way to do that then to give them a time when they do not have to compete with Nintendo's games.

That is what Nintendo did with the DS, once the DS was well established they got out of the way so third parties could make $ and that caused them to lock in third party support.

This is a perfect time for them to do the same thing for the Wii.

They know a lot of third party games are coming 2008/early 2009 that have potential to sell pretty well...Call of Duty: World at War, The Conduit, Dead Rising, Skate It, GH On Tour, SW:Force Unleased, SW:Clone Wars, RB2, Samba de Amigo, De Blob, Deadly Creature, Sky Crawlers, Lego Batman, Mad World, Shaun White, Tenchu 4, Spyborgs, Rygar, PES2009, All Play Madden Tiger & Fifa, Ghostbusters, Mega Man 9, Rayman Rabbid's TV Party, Monster Lab, Monster Hunter 3, Quantum of Solace, Sam & Max Season One, Mushroom Men, Castlevania Judgment, Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, Sonic Unleashed, Little King Story, DDR Hottest Party 2 and more (all the CasualZ titles, etc). Undoubtledly and unfortunately there is lots of shovelware hitting the market as well.

Now is a perfect time for Nintendo to lay low and let third parties get some profits from the fastest selling selling console ever made.

Money in the bank is the only way third parties are going to take the Wii seriously, and Nintendo might be very wise to duplicate the strategy it used with the DS and third parties. It will make sure Nintendo is not the only one developing good games for the Wii.

Next year M$ and Sony will have some big guns to fire, and Nintendo can use this time to make make sure they can rely on third parties as well as thier own 2009 line up to keep support for the Wii strong, for both the core and expanded market.

3rd parties that have tried might be able to see the best sales they have had on the Wii to date for Holiday 2008.

Thoughts?

That actually makes sense. Third parties can't actually wave the "we can't compete with Nintendo" flag if Nintendo doesn't have much of anything to compete with. Nintendo is in a good position to hold off games since they make plenty of money from Wii and DS sales, so I guess they could just leave room for the third parties to make some money.

Although this strategy (if it is what they are doing) does suck Chewbacca balls for Nintendo fans.

I agree with everything you said, and Nintendo has been saying this. Reggie, Cammie(even though I dislike her), and Iwata have been saying constantly to look at the 3rd parties. This is probably the most likely reason for the first party game drought, and I don't see any other explanation that is more likely than this. When they succeed I expect 3rd parties to come to the wii in the same way they went to the ds.

If the theory is correct and works, there might be strong 3rd party profits the last two quarters of 2008.

Of course this will only work until M$ releases the Newton/Xmote and pays off anyone developing for Nintendo to stop.

I don't know if Nintendo would not release their big games for the rest of the year to improve third party game sales ... One thing that wouldn't surprise me is if Nintendo was not announcing games more than a couple of months in advance of their release in order to increase the profile of third party games. Hypothetically speaking, if Nintendo only (really) has three to five games on the horizon the gaming press and Nintendo fans will be forced to pay far more attention to third party titles regardless of their quality.

As the Wii userbase gets relatively bigger, that moneyhat will have to get bigger as well...

Will they be willing to pay *every* third party upwards of 25-50 million to develop for them?  Especially when there is more at stake to the 3rd parties than the direct profit from the sales; they have to take into account the deprecation to their biggest brands' values by not getting them into the machines and minds of as many people as possible.

No, I don't think MS's moneyhat strategy will work against the Wii.  It works against Sony because the difference between 19.7M and 14.3M puts the math in their favor anyways; they only have to make up the cost of not selling to a small userbase.  Between 19.7 and 29M, they have to make up a *huge* moneyhat.  It's not feasable in the long run, even to MS (after all, they have to remain profitable; their shareholders don't see Nintendo as a threat to their OS monopoly, so why would they care if Nintendo took over the living room?)

Good point. That might be what they are doing since they didn't announce a huge game like they usually do. One thing we know about Nintemdo is that they always have a trick up their sleeves.

This will be a good holiday for 3rd parties if this is right.

Whether they do it on purpose, or not, now is the time for 3rd party games to shine. With only a couple of titles released by Nintendo in the second half, there won't be any AAA Nintendo game overshadowing 3rd party games. If they can release some good titles, I'm sure they will sell.

I think Nintendo also doesn't want to have a lot of Nintendo franchises to compete with their already released games such SMG, Brawl, MK:Wii and all the others. A lot of people haven't bought those games yet. It sucks for all of us who already beat those games though...

At least, it's true that the 3rd party offering has never been as good on a Nintendo console since a long time.