Or, Wii Versus PS360.  Just kidding of course, but there is some truth to the statement as I hope you'll soon see.  

First, a few notes on how this post was born:  On the now-dead thread "The Wii third-party game explosion has begun!", there was a heated argument between windbane on one side and Bodhesatva and your mother on the other.  

Windbane made an excellent point that although the Wii is getting many more exclusives than the PS3 or 360 -- or even both -- there are also many, many games that are coming out for the PS3 and 360, but not the Wii.  Perhaps the most famous, or infamous, of these are GTA IV and RE5.  These games don't show up on anyone's "exclusive" radar but they are a powerful force that needs to be recognized.  

These games are more than just anomalies, like RE4 was.  That game was a wildly popular third-party exclusive to a console that had about 20% of the sales numbers of the top-selling console, so there was enormous pressure to port it to the PS2 -- so, eventually, Capcom did.  There was no such pressure to port it to the Xbox -- so they didn't.  But that is the only such game I can think of from last gen.  (I don't claim that it was in fact the only one, of course.)  In this gen, Armored Core 4, Oblivion, Virtua Fighter 5, and others have already come out for two consoles but not the third -- very strange when the third is the most popular!  

And then there's Sonic.  Sonic, I believe, is compelling evidence of a strong trend of games coming out for the PS3 and Xbox 360 but not the Wii -- "disexclusives", if you will -- while the Wii goes off in its own direction, with its own games.  This is almost certainly due to some combination of the Wii's admittedly lower hardware specifications (duct tape not included), and its unique control interface, which makes porting other systems' games to it awkward at best, and porting games from it to other systems awkward, difficult, and perhaps in some cases outright impossible.  

But back to Sonic.  Sonic the Hedgehog was released last November for the 360 and a few moths later for the PS3.  The Wii got Sonic and the Secret Rings in rougly the same window that the other Sonic was hitting the PS3.  How very odd -- I have never, in 20 years of playing games, noticed such an event:  two obviously parallel games, from the same company, at the same time -- just on different systems!  Why not a port?  Because the Wii is different.  It is so different that it is creating an unprecedented phenomenon of splitting the games market into two parts -- Wii and not-the-Wii.  If there were 3 handheld systems no doubt we would be seeing the same thing -- to a lesser extent -- with the DS due to its two screens and touchscreen.  After all, there are a hell of a lot more than two major significant differences between the Wii and its competitors.  Disexclusives are just a natural symptom of this unique and unprecedented market dichotomy.  

Maybe some of this is due to the common perception that the Wii is largely a "casual gamers" console.  And perhaps it's due to the complete failure to anticipate the runaway success of the Wii -- although I can't say I recall the Gamecube missing out on so many ports of major games.  I think it's clear that these two things, while real and important, were merely minor contributing factors to this fascinating phenomenon.  I wonder how it'll affect gaming; I certainly think it would be interesting to see people's predictions on how this all falls out.  

Commence rioting in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...

P.S.  Credit is due to KruzeS, with whom I had a good-natured argument due to my original post in the dead thread.  The back-and-forth helped me solidify my position, and I might never have started this thread if he hadn't responded in the first place. 

Good points all through. I believe this is the reason many people think the war will be much closer this gen than last by comparison. The huge disparity between the Wii and the 360/PS3 has caused development houses to make whole new branches just for Wii development, which is ... wow, to say the least. It's a whole new approach, and I think the market is big enough to accommodate them both.

seems logical.... what was the argument? this seems like what HAS to happen with the unique position the Wii is in.

 What I've set down is more of a complex observation.  The only argument is that the observation is correct.  The Wii and its position are unique in a LOT of ways, and I don't know how many people see not only all the Wii trees but the whole Wii forest as well.  And that's not to say that my view of the forest is infallible either.  

Basically, I don't think I've seen the whole situation laid out this way, and I want people to look at it and see if it makes them have some revelation or prediction about the shape of the future.  How will this affect the Wii?  How will it affect the PS3 and 360, individually and as a group?  How will it affect the whole industry, during the Wii's lifetime and afterward?  How will it affect game development?  Game developers?  Will it affect the design of future consoles, and how?  

Sometimes it's very helpful to put the whole situation down onto one page and take another look.  So I did.   

Well if you really want to whore out your game to as big a user base as possible (EA)

make PS3/360/PC version and Wii/PS2/PSP version.

@Final-Fan,

I don't have any major problems with your post except that I feel you only fully evolved one half of the conclusion to the situation.   If we are to assume that this is the case then it is logical also to assume that the wii will be getting exclusive games that cater to its "specialness" and they will be games that as you yourself say are "awkward, difficult, and perhaps in some cases outright impossible" to port.  There is currently no reason to assume these games will not be as much of a draw for the console as the "disexclusives" (as you have dubbed them) will generate for the PS3/360.  This is especially true by the time you factor in the part where two consoles will be gaining the benefit of the 1 game so its impact is divided and significantly lessened for a given console. I think to fully apreciate that exclusives are designed to sell consoles because you can only get it on the one console,  we need to then account for this with disexclusives  by realising the impact will be split.

Now I am not trying to marganlize the "disexclusives" to the point of saying they would be inherently less impactful on a given console than the Wii exclusives.  I just think it would be premature to assume that Wii exclusives are going to be inherently less(or more) impactful. I am not sure where you stand on this issue but I am stating it so you know where I stand.

With all of that in mind I think this falls in line perfectly with my beliefs that the PS3 and 360 are not directly competing with the Wii.  And in general it works well with the idea that the Wii makes a good second console since it has differentiated itself from the other two significantly. I think Nintendo has a great market strategy, and it will serve them well in the current market environment of two similar choices and one very different choice.

I think all of this makes for a phenomonal situation for "we the gamers" as it ensures that all of us will have the games we love and the games we like.  Right now I believe developers are being tasked with creating the widest variety of games the industry has ever produced and that to me means that games won't be stale as quickly and it means there should always be something new and interesting for us to play. 

PS - @Everyone, Please don't bother responding to me unless you have thoroughly read what I said, I don't want to get into another debate where people haven't bothered to get a grasp on what I have said. I chose my wording with intent, so please read carefully. 

I think a lot of third parties are seeing the success of Wii Sports and Wii Play and think the most lucrative and safe games to be developing for the Wii are casual ones and those aimed at a younger audience while those developing for the 360/PS3 see the success of games such as Gears of War and Resistance: Fall of Man and so make games targeted at a similar audience.

And since third parties have finite resources they choose to put them towards the most lucrative audiences for the games (eg. Ubisoft making Haze for the 360/PS3 and Rayman: Raving Rabbids 2 for the Wii).  Would it make sense to port some of those casual games or those for a younger audience to the 360/PS3 when similar games in the past have done horrible, or to spend the money and resources to adapt Haze so it worked well with the Wii without the guarantee of similar sales to those on the 360/PS3?

Will games like Metroid Prime 3 change that?  Possibly to some extent but games like Halo 3, GTAIV, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare will still likely convince third parties to continue making games targeted at that audience on the 360/PS3.

 I dont think Zelda and Red steel are casual games but i see your point.

Anyway, with other 'hardcore' games like Resident evil doing well the Wii will get better and better 3rd party support. 

I absolutely agree with all of this. For those interested, I think the main sticking point between Windbane and I was our perspective. He was viewing through the eyes of a PS3 user; I was (At least attempting) to look through the eyes of an objective hardware sales analyst.

If you're simpy a game player, the Wii-vs-everything-else environment actually works pretty well; the PC, PS3 and 360 will probably share almost every third party game amongst each other from now on, with the currently announced exclusives being the last bunch of games to ever really go in the exclusive direction (And I even expect a few of these remaining stalwarts to fall, as well). If you're a player, who cares if a game is cross platform or not? If you own a system that can play it, you win.

On the other hand, from a hardware distributor's perspective, this is far from ideal. We need only look at the recent spat of annoucements out of the Microsoft and Sony camps to see how bloody this battle has gotten between them; Microsoft seems to have spent an inordinant amount of money to secure exclusive content for GTA IV (not even an exclusive game, just content!) while Sony has done a great deal behind the scenes, including sending a "SWAT team of super engineers" to Epic games in order to make sure that the UE3 engine was working properly on the PS3 platform. Who knows how much money and effort has been spent if we knew the stories behind all the "timed exclusive" titles that have been announced such as Ace Combat 6 and Haze, most of which, I assume, come with some sort of incentive -- perhaps not direct cash, but marketing assistance or distribution assistance, which are, in effect, cash, just spent indirectly.

So the problem isn't that PS3 or 360 owners don't win; they do win, they'll still get a lot of games, most of which will be shared between them. The problem is that the companies making their consoles do not win. Multi-platform titles drive sales of systems, but not of a specific system (which is obviously what console manufacturers would be concerned with), and Microsoft and Sony have become so focused on the same, specific, traditional hardcore gamer audience that they're probably both going to lose money over the course of this generation, when all is said and done (meaning, their net income will be below their net expenditures).