I think that, when a 3rd party claims that its software isn't "selling", they tend to mean "selling enough to recoup losses, and eventually profit", almost without exception.

Of course 3rd party software "sells" on the Wii. That's a meaningless question, and Nintendo gave a meaningless, although certainly valid, answer to it (the meaningless question), with their graph. The question is, and that the 3rd party publishers are posing is, "does it sell well enough, such that our investment is worth it?" That's the *real* issue, and neither company wants to address it directly, it seems.

The fact that a zillion copies of a zillion different games are sold is meaningless. Each one of those games needs to sell enough to turn a profit. I'd prefer Nintendo had some meaningful numbers to share, rather than their lame total #s graph.

Let me pose it this way:

Console A has 30M units

Console B has 20M units

Console C has 15M units

...meaningless

Console A sells 150K average software units per title

Console B sells 250K average software units per title

Console C sells 170K average software units per title

Console A titles cost an average of $5M, and gross $6M -- avg $1M profit (+20% return)

Console B titles cost an average of $15M, and gross $15M -- avg breakeven

Console C titles cost an average of $15M, and gross $10M -- avg $5M loss

...and lastly

Console B and C crossplatform titles cost $20M, and gross $25M -- avg $5M profit. (+25% return)

There you have it. The 3rd party standpoint.

But most third party publishers and developers have been saying that Wii software sales have surpassed their expectations ... The people who have been making claims that third party software hasn't been selling on the Wii are bloggers, analysts, fanboys, Microsoft and Sony.

You're right about the spin part, all that really matters is the reality of the situation. 

As far as the analysis part, well, this is a sales/prediction/analysis/tracking website...

@Groucho: You had a good breakdown, but you'd still had to cut budgets sizes into segments and sales in segments and after that look do budget and sales relate into each other. Then you'd need to cut budget into segments of developement and marketing and see which pays off. Then you'd need to take into account developement times of titles and see how fast returns you are able to get. That's what 3rd parties would listen.

Look at the above, since the graph didn't show any breakdown, we can assume that Nintendo wasn't addressing 3rd parties, and why should they be telling them when the 3rd parties have alot better numbers themselves, which has worldwide shipments, revenue and profit made by the company, unlike the NPD data for North-America.
As HS already said, Nintendo was addressing message boards, forums, blogs and gaming news sites in order to kill the wings from "3rd parties don't sell on Wii".

@Groucho: You had a good breakdown, but you'd still had to cut budgets sizes into segments and sales in segments and after that look do budget and sales relate into each other. Then you'd need to cut budget into segments of developement and marketing and see which pays off. Then you'd need to take into account developement times of titles and see how fast returns you are able to get. That's what 3rd parties would listen.

Look at the above, since the graph didn't show any breakdown, we can assume that Nintendo wasn't addressing 3rd parties, and why should they be telling them when the 3rd parties have alot better numbers themselves, which has worldwide shipments, revenue and profit made by the company, unlike the NPD data for North-America.
As HS already said, Nintendo was addressing message boards, forums, blogs and gaming news sites in order to kill the wings from "3rd parties don't sell on Wii".

@bdbdbd:

I'm not trying to say that Nintendo has no grounds for saying the 3rd parties should pay attention to the Wii. The Wii is immensely popular -- that alone makes it viable for 3rd party development. There are a number of reasons why the Wii is currently unattractive, for 3rd party investment dollars, and a number of reasons why it is attractive. Namely...

Reasons not to develop on the Wii:
* Wii games can't be ported as easily to the other platforms, or the PC, and still be respected as a quality title, and up-porting is always more expensive than down-porting. Portability of a game is a huge factor in its ability to turn a profit, because it expands the available audience at a relatively low cost.
* The Wii audience, although larger than any other individual platform, is less targetable, in terms of demographics, and individual games have performed below expectations in the past. This is the primary reason 3rd party Wii games have performed so poorly, in my opinion. The Wiis sheer numbers have saved it from this "general audience" demographic scatter, but only barely. I believe that Nintendo actually *needs* 50% marketshare to overcome this obstacle to 3rd party profit performance on the Wii.
* The Wii is the oddball, in terms of development, whereas the X360, PS3, and PC all share something of a common ground, in terms of general capability. The Wiis numbers may exceed the X360, or the PS3, but it doesn't exceed X360 + PS3 (yet), and it certainly comes nowhere near to exceeding X360+PS3+PC, and never will. The X360s greatest advantage, from a 3rd party perspective, is that it is very similar to the PC. The Wii can never hold this title, and PS3 games only make it there if they are also crossplatform on the X360.
* The Wii's online marketplace is weak, relative to its competitors, and online play on the Wii is weak, relative to its competitors. Nintendo has stated that they have no plans to improve it.

Reasons to develop on the Wii:
* Wii numbers are large, and showing no signs of slowing down. If it achieves 50% marketshare, the tables will likely turn on investment returns per title.
* The Wii has a low barrier for new developers. It is easy and cheap to develop on, and a creative developer has a great deal of potential, from a market perspective.
* Due to the low barrier for new titles, risk is less, and online capability is less important. Inevitably, a low risk entry allows the largest quantity of new IPs to emerge, and this helps *hugely* with hardware sales, which, in turn, affect software sales.

Is it not interesting how the argument has changed from "Third-party games can't sell on Wii because of Nintendo's strong first-party lineup" to "You have to analyze the data this way to get the right result."

Both Nintendo and Microsoft presented matters in a way most favorable to them. The only real issue is the Destructoid piece not realizing what Nintendo said (and didn't say). But then again, there are people out there who feel they lose if Nintendo wins.

Mike from Morgantown

It's not spin when the source expresses the elaborate, reveals the obvious and reverberates exactly what was revealed.

It is spin when the source expresses the elaborate, reveals the obvious and reverberates surplus of what was revealed.

If Microsoft is counting the first year of the Xbox360 then they moot the their graphs credability, they would have had to include PS2 sales and GC sales for the one year that Xbox360 had ahead of the other two platforms, but that would be a whole other can of worms. This is only because Xbox360 was competeing with (is) those two platforms...

Nintendo showed data in context Microsoft showed data out of context... which is spin... I'm too busy spinning.

I've learned with each refutation comes a new varation of the fallacy.  It's a cycle that has no end because you can always add more details to the assertion.

1. Wii games don't sell.

2. 3rd party Will games don't sell.

3. Good 3rd party Wii games don't sell.

4. Good 3rd party Wii games don't sell as much as X.

5. Good 3rd part Wii games don't sell as much as X at Y price.

dam..5.21 million is not bad at all...what game is that though ???

ummm..microsoft speech don't interest me at all...80% of the times they lie