Whats funny is TOSE made its name on Nintendo products. Its best known product is the Game and Watch series. They aren't some company with a heavy anti Nintendo bias by a long shot. Also they are not fully saying this for their own sake, they are not really a game developer like EA is a game developer. Rather they are a developer that people send ports and game requests to; which they make, often without credit.

In many ways TOSE is representative of the industry as a whole (outside Nintendo who obviously likes the way things are going). Nintendo systems have been the way they are now since the end of the SNES era. Noone ever makes significant money off of N64 and later Nintendo systems except Nintendo. If you look at the top 50 N64 and later games for Nintendo systems Nintendo games (and I'm including Rare games with Nintendo characters) account for over 80% of the best sellers. That is inverted for PS systems, which helps explain why everyone but Nintendo prefers Nintendo being the niche product instead of the dominant system. From the weird media Nintendo likes to use (gamecube disks, cartridges well past their prime) to the very different control schemes which are difficult to adapt to many types of games, Nintendo systems have to be the hardest to make a profit from if you're not Nintendo.

Say that on Wii or DS there aren't money that can be made by third-party is a moronic statement.
The problem is that in these platform you musst risk with your own money and ideas, many ( like was with the DS ) are simply waiting the prophet ( Nintendo ) to open the way.

Tose is wooried because their profit depend on the other publishers so if other publishers doesn't grow like Nintendo they could feel the backslash.

I heard about Tose a couple of years ago when an article was discussing how publishers and developers were going to handle the massive development costs of HD games ... One of the ways that was discussed to lower development cost was to outsource a large portion of the development to companies (like Tose) which have development resources in developing nations like China.

What I really wonder about this interview is whether Tose doesn't think Nintendo's growth is good because having games that can be developed entirely internally by most companies (without any need to outsource) is bad for Tose.

@HappySqurriel: I think you nailed it. Growth expectations for Tose would be a lot bigger with the HD consoles that it is with Wii.

@impulsivity: Well, that was basically just BS. If you look at the number of 3rd party titles on N64 and GC, you'll notice why they didn't sell. Basically the lack of 3rd party support have forced Nintendo to make its 1st party even stronger. Besides, there's a Sega game in GC top ten, if i recall.

If we count out the few publishers on PS2, that has the best-selling games, you'll notice that "average" 3rd party publisher didn't really have room in the best sellers list. The reason why the games sold so well in general, was because of the huge userbase, which has nothing to do with the first partys strength.
In general the "3rd parties don't sell" is extremely stupid argument, since "3rd parties" isn't a single instance. In any case every other game than your own, is outsiders game, which you have to compete against, no matter if its Sony, Nintendo, Take Two, Hudson or Konami.

He's not even saying that. He's acknowledging the fact that 3rd parties and other groups are growing too... he just thinks Nintendo being successful is bad for publishers for some reason.

Makes you wonder how many Nintendo created games TOSE has worked on recently.  It may just be they don't get much work from them anymore.

Are any third part developers happy about the success of the wii?

I would say EA, Capcom, Ubisoft, Sega, SquareEnix and Majesco have all made a bigger profit from the Wii than from the PS3 or 360. Some of those developers fail to capitalize on it though (Ubisoft, SquareEnix, Capcom).

@Kasz: Thanks for clarification. That's what i was thinking to write, but worded it badly.

Anyway, his take was a little too shallow (industrywise thinking), since partially Nintendos growth has been due to 3rd parties putting all their support to non-Nintendo platforms, leaving the playground only for Nintendo. Well, we'll see the issue fixed in the near future.

Probably because he has an education and you're misinterpreting things.

This is just one of the effect of the war of attrition 3rd parties attempted on Nintendo and the Wii. This is part of the backlash, and Japan is feeling it harder because the Wii was dominant there from its launch.
Everything is going according to predictions (mine at least).
Besides, what the Tose head says isn't that Nintendo's growth is bad for all publishers, it's bad only for those that refused to support Nintendo systems, and published games for the two others instead.
Tose's insight is good because it comes from the inside, giving a better picture of the situation than what's apparent.
Fortunately for the western devs, the situation was not as clear cut, so they still have time to adjust their strategy, thanks to the XB360's lead.