In terms of Japanese games it is about equal. Maybe you don't care about tenchu, but I'm sure many other people do. And what about MH3?Fatal Frame?Main Stream tales games?http://www.vgchartz.com/games/game.php?id=7136 ToS 2 so far at 210k sales in japan. With lower developement costs that makes it sell about on par or above most ps3 games, and also is cheaper to make. Also there are many new japanese IPs going way to the wii. Arc Rise Fantasia, Fragile, Little King Story are just a few new IPS. All I have to say is wait until TGS. Oh and btw tell me some PS3 games that have been selling well in Japan other than MGS4.

On shelves here in Australia I can't keep up with all the third party releases! They are mostly crap and I don't want to "keep up" with them but this will only continue. The problem is that higher production values havent always meant higher sales on Wii for 3rd parties and most companies are still happy releasing cheap crap that even when they fail they lose next to nothing!

The market leader can't be ignored and Nintendo have easily more third party support than on Gamecube but if this leads to AAA quality 3rd party titles that become millon silling monsters remain to be seen!

If Zack and Wiki, No more Heroes, Boom Blox, Manhunt 2 etc sold millions of copies like Nintendo 1st party titles, this issue would not be even debated!

Summing up my thinking is: Yes that while under different circumstances, the Wii will see more support and better returns for third parties like the DS!  Now where is umbrella Chronicles 2?

Yes? The Wii getting all...what? The mainstream attention? The Japanese support? The money?

Ah! This again. The exact same statement that's already been debunked multiple times, including in this very thread! But I blame myself for that: after all, judging from the fact that you're making such an absurd claim in the first place, I should have known I'd have to spell out some (rather obvious) counterexamples. Here are the same links as I put in my last post, only this time in a more convenient, harder to ignore format.

http://www.gamespot.com/wii/rpg/monsterhunter3/index.html (Monster Hunter 3: high-budget game, and kind of a big deal, especially in Japan...)

http://wii.ign.com/objects/142/14222041.html (Does having a Wii version of Call of Duty that's identical to the HD consoles mean that the series is now "low cost productions or series nobody cares about anymore"? Just curious)

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3168012 (See above, but replace "Call of Duty" with "Guitar Hero")

http://www.n4g.com/wii/News-166561.aspx (The Tales of series is having its next installment on the Wii. And in marked contrast to the one on the 360, this one didn't have to be moneyhatted by the console maker. Or is the Tales series now low-budget too? I'm becoming increasingly confused.)

http://wii.ign.com/objects/142/14251204.html (So the dudes at Naughty Dog and Insomniac get bankrolled by Capcom for a major project. Still "low-budget/nobody cares?)

http://purenintendo.com/2008/06/11/the-conduit-wii-officially-announced/ (Well, here's a new one. The most expensive project High Voltage has ever made is being done on the Wii. And they're paying for it themselves, which is quite a risk for a developer like themselves. But I guess since it's on the Wii, it doesn't count.)

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3164001 (Surely getting the only console version of Spore, one of the biggest EA properties ever made, means the Wii is getting quality third party support now, no? Ah shoot, I keep forgetting the "it's on the Wii, so it's not cool anymore" rule. I'm so silly sometimes!)

Oh, we're only talking about games in JAPAN now. I see. I'm sorry, I was busy when we moved the goalposts, so forgive me for being a bit behind. Yeah, cracking 200k in just three weeks is pathetic for a game in the Tales series. I mean, it's totally doing so much worse than its predecessor, despite having better review scores and advertising (Protip: none of those conditions are true). And I must hasten to add that as a Playstation supporter, you really shouldn't focus too much attention on Japan: Mario & Sonic has outsold everything on the PS3 in Japan, excluding Metal Gear. I'm just sayin'...I'd also advise you to stay away from Media Create sales threads, because if you want to believe third-party Wii games don't sell in Japan, you'll leave a sad, bitter, disappointed man...Or have you failed to notice that almost every Japanese developer is focusing more and more on the Wii? Check those links I put up, and you'll be unpleasantly surprised.

Whose waiting? I just finished playing an hour of Medal of Honor. Yesterday I breezed through No More Heroes. Tomorrow, I'm thinking of picking up Trauma Center, although Okami might also be a good choice. Really though, this little blurb is pretty meaningless, because when I look at the HD line-up, all I see is a bunch of same-y shooters coming out. So if that's where the "next level of gaming" is, thank God I'm not there.

...

Your Honor, there is a contradiction in the witness' testimony. Here, take at look at these statements...

"The machine with the better library gets the better sales.And one hint ...it isn't the Wii."

Your Honor, take a look at the front page of this site. We can clearly see that the Wii is getting the better sales. So if the machine with the better library gets the better sales, and the machine with the better library isn't the Wii...Then the witness is lying on the stand! By his own words, the Wii must have the best library! Can you explain that, Your Honor!?

In any case, it is obvious that this witness knows not of what he speaks, either of our reality or that of his own little world. I thereby find the defendant Not Guilty, by reason of being delusional. That is all.

I think I agree with most of your post. We will continue to see shovelware on the Wii, simply because development costs for the system are manageable, something that can't be said for the HD systems. And wading through those games to find the many gems is a bit of a pain. The place where I think we diverge is about third party AAA games on the system. While they're imminent (we already have release dates for some) we haven't seen too many of them so far, making the Wii's performance difficult to gauge.

The major games it has hosted have all proven to be quite lucrative, though: Zak and Wiki, No More Heroes, and Boom Blox are three games whose publisher's have gone on record as being quite happy with their sales. Manhunt 2 bombed, it is true, but the game sucked, period. The fact that the Wii version outsold the PS2 version by a large margin tells us it wasn't the system's fault that the game didn't sell: it was the game's.

In any case, the next few months will prove to be quite interesting indeed.

The Wii and the DS are following a similar pattern when it comes to third party support at the same point in their lifespan; in ways the Wii is doing better because it seems like more companies are identifying it as the market leader far earlier, but the longer development time of the Wii balances that out.

Unlike previous generations, both the Nintendo DS and Wii have noticeable lag between the time it becomes clear that they are/will be the market leader and when third party support is at a level appropriate for a console that is as dominant as these consoles are. The main reason for this lag is that both of these systems are drastically difference in performance capabilities in comparison to their competition and, unlike previous generations, you can't simply change the target platform in the middle of development of most games.

What we see from the Wii for the rest of the year is (roughly) 150 games with solid release dates, and (as can be seen here http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=34958 ) approximately 50 of those are third party games that are of fairly good quality. When you contrast that with the number of games being delivered to HD consoles (about 100) and the number of games that were released on the Gamecube or N64 in their life (about 450) it becomes clear that the Wii is seeing much more third party support than recent Nintendo home consoles.

Now, it is time to look back at when these third party games would have been started ... Being that it takes 12 to 24 months to complete most Wii games a game that is being released in the second half of 2008 would (most likely) have started development between July 1st 2006 and December 31st 2007; realistically, the larger and better games would (typically) need more time to develop and would (mostly) have started between July 1st 2006 and July 1st 2007. In this timeframe most analysts were still giving awful analysis that the Wii was a fad, all gamers wanted HD content, and a $400 PS3 would be able to kill the Wii; only recently, after their expected death of the Wii with GTA 4 failed, did most analysts start accepting the Wii as the new market leader.

Inspite of what some fanboys thing, there is no secret society of third party publishers who have meetings about what platforms to support and whether they should focus on HD content; most publishers would come to terms with the new market reality at their own pace, determine to what extent they would support the Wii, and begin executing their own plan. What we have seen from this is that publishers like EA, Sega and Capcom seem to have decided far earlier than other publishers to put decent projects on the Wii (potentially, not that long after Christmas 2006) while other publishers will probably have taken much longer (after GTA 4), or the Wii may not be part of their plan at all (Epic comes to mind).

My personal expectation is that the Wii's third party support will grow in both number and quality of game being released, and a couple of years from now people will look at the second half line-up of 2008 (which, in terms of third party support, is one of the better line-ups a Nintendo home console has had) and try to remember how the Wii's third party support was weak at one point in time.

raelly very interesting read noname

Main difference between Wii and DS though, is DS is in a market with PSP where 3rd parties have been unable to make money off the platform considering so many piracy issues. DS however makes lots of money for them and with a 75 million userbase and lower costs to make, it's the ideal choice.

Wii on the other hand is in a market where while costs to make game on the Wii is cheaper and poses less risk, also has 360 and PS3 were making a game on both of them is of little risk considering software sells just as well on them 2 combined as it would Wii alone. Thus 3rd parties are allowed to stay in their comfortable zones which is why Wii may always be the platform used to pay for PS360 game productions. However Wii will still get all the mainstream games considering they sell beastly on the platform because its the mainstream console of choice. Which is weird why GTA hasn't been released on the platform.

Although I agree with you, I also think that the HD consoles will see (somewhat) lower support in the comming years ...

With HD game development times, almost all of the games that will be released until the end of 2008 were started when it was assumed that the HD consoles would capture (more than) 75% of the home console market in every region. It is safe to assume that many developers felt forced to take on the larger budgets of HD games because they had no alternatives; the Wii's success brought with it the alternative many were looking for.

Thanks. I was a bit more flippant than usual, but I'm on a sugar high right now, and I figured Diomedes wouldn't mind if I had some fun with him.

Actually, I disagree with the part about developers having little risk when releasing a game on the 360 and PS3. The average development cost for an HD game is somewhere in the $20 million range, which is one reason so many developers are priced out. Making the game multi-platform adds several million dollars to that figure, somewhere in the five-to-six range if I recall.

Add to that the fact that the average HD game has to sell 500k copies just to break even (excluding the extra cost of making it multi-console) and we begin to see why so many studios are merging or folding at the exact same time that revenues are at record highs. I can't think of too many third-parties who are really making all that much profit off of the HD consoles. For most games, you seem to either go on a tear and sell multi-million copies or, far more likely, you bust. It seems like trusting the roulette wheel isn't too wise a strategy if you're a businessman.

Well I think that's probably true as well. The more mainstream the Wii becomes... or brand appeal and sales it gets... the more it takes away from PS360. It'll take away that mainstream appeal they have and of course sales. And when that happens you'll see a point in PS360 land of saturation. Already starting to see it with the 360 in America.

Now I don't know if developers will realize it, but when that happens the risks of making a huge game on PS360 will become astronomically higher while Wii will become even easier. But I'm doubting 3rd parties would ever fully commit to the Wii when that does happen, but you would see more positive support towards it.