nintendo has not historicaly needed third parties to make money, so if anyone is in a position to make a console for the benifit of 1st part its nintendo.

microsoft did try and make it as friendly as possible for 3rd party devs, they are fallowing the same plan that took them to the top of the os world by sticking mainly with generic parts with easy to use dev tools his point seems very valid.

I don't think third party publishers/developers truely "dislike" Nintendo being that they still have shown a ton of support for both the Wii and Nintendo DS ... I think third party publishers did not expect Nintendo to be successful with either the Nintendo DS or the Wii because of how Nintendo's strategy went against conventional wisdom.

Although few publishers and developers would phrase it this way, a lot of people in the industry believe that people who buy videogame consoles instead of gaming PCs do so because they are less expensive and easier to use than a PC; and these gamers secretly want the same experience that PC gamers want. In other words, they believe that everyone wants complicated gameplay mechnaics, photorealistic graphics, and fully featured online multiplayer.

Now there is some truth to this because a lot of former PC gamers grew tired of constant upgrades on their PCs, moved to consoles, and are looking for the same kind of games; and there has always been a certain demand for a PC styled gaming experience on consoles.

What many publishers/developers missed over that past several years was that, although the console gaming market as a whole was growing, there was a massive shrinkage in the videogame market among certain demographics and no growth among others because this push towards PC styled gaming was alienating many potential gamers.

The industry (on the whole) has not adapted and does not understand what to do with the Wii, they have made assumptions about what Wii owners want and produced products to match these assumptions and do not understand why they have not been that successful. They have difficulty understanding that someone who doesn't exclusively buy First Perso Shooter games may want to buy a First Person Shooter game on occasion, and that a gamer who owns a PS3 or XBox 360 may also own a Wii. They also have difficulty accepting that a person who may not value the qualities they associate with a quality game will not (neccessarily) buy an awful game simply because they market it to them.

This problem has been compounded because their "High Quality" developers have been tied up in HD projects, in many cases since before the Wii launched, and when it takes 2 to 3 years to complete a HD game and 1.5 to 2 years to complete a Wii game there is a massive turn around time from publishers/developers seeing the need to support the Wii heavily and the Wii receiving this support.

Of course not, third parties love nintendo. They can make low-budget shovelware on Nintendo's consoles and still have it sell. Who wouldn't love that?

The thing is, many of the Wii's best third party games such as Okami, Zack & Wiki, Boom Blox, No More Heroes and de Blob have hardly seen stellar sales. Until this trend changes it would be difficult for many third party developers to justify focusing on Wii.

@Goddog: What actually lead M$ to the top player in OS world, was their business strategy with making their OS as a cross-platform standard (during the time, when the competition was between hardware, instead of software as it is today). They tried to use the same strategy in console world, without a success, since only Sega accepted Windows for their console. So, it's currently not possible for M$ to use the same strategy.
As for the generic parts, 360 has PPC processor, which means that direct porting from Windows isn't possible and 360 also uses DirectX, which means that direct porting from PSWii isn't possible due to the open source API:s. So, in the end, it's not as generic as you make it sound.

Nintendo haven't needed third parties for profit, but they're a developer themselves. If they design hardware, where their games can make profit (instead of profiting from royalties, leaving all the costs for 3rd parties to pay), it's pretty sure that a 3rd party developer can profit on the platform just as well.

@bouzane: Until 3rd party devs start advertising their games properly and stop gimping them down, then sales will get bigger. Core audience isn't stupid.

Besides, why do people always mention the games that didn't sell a million? There's 60 games already that sold over 500k units, most of them third party games.

Do you believe 500k units for a very small effort is a bad number? Those who tried got the sales they deserved, others may have cashed in on the uninformed casuals, but that doesn't happen 2 times. People learn.

true i should have tuched on the powerpc topic, but the directx with the provided conversion kit (which they bought from a former mac dev years ago) makes a pc/console very easy. I have always felt Ms stratagy for the windows platorm was to leave it open so that dev could provided software for it , without much difficulty, and keep the price suppressed. that is what lead them past mac to the largest os developer. and will make them a strong player in the console market. Nintendo adopted apples stratagy, and has won with it. 

about your nintendo yea that jives with my point, i agree there completely. there system though is set up to help them first, 3rd parties last

How can you honestly say this. Are you so obsessed with nintendo that you can't think outside the box? You actually think 3rd parties wish failure on nintendo?

Most just thought the ps3 would repeat the success of it's predecesors, thus it continues to get 3rd party support. As for 360. PC devs would ensure it's support doesn't falter. They even supported the xbox over ps2. Nintendo just took everyone by surprise so they really don't know what to do with the system. Remember that traditional controllers have been around for over 20 years. This is all most developers know how to deal with.

Well Okami has sold as well as it did on the PS2
No More Heroes is Suda 51's best selling game ever
Zack and Wiki sold 500,000 copies even though it is part of a genre which hasn't been popular in 15 years
Boom Blox was poorly advertized, low budget game that sold 500,000 copies
de Blob continues to chug along seeing sales week-after-week and will (likely) pass 500,000 copies sold

Being that many of these games exceeded expectations and have justified sequels due to their profitability maybe it is about time that people start to consider that "success" is something that has to be defined differently for every game.

@Goddog: Yes it does partially support your argument. But let's face the facts; all three make their consoles for themselves first. If it would be for 3rd parties to decide, we'd have 3 consoles that all are x86 based with the same horsepower.

Actually, the "ease of developement" wasn't the reason why M$ operating system took quickly over Apple OS. The reason is, that Apple OS have always been proprietary OS for Apple computers, when M$ OS has been cross-platform OS. The real breakthrough happened when the cheap IBM-clones appeared and M$ sold their OS for the clones. Apples strategy have always been to make hardware and software (the same as Nintendos have always been).
Now, as for Windows being an "open" platform, M$ has had a lot of trouble in EU due to them limiting the third parties on Windows. This was the reason for Vista release being delayed, when they still were solving the same issues with XP. Of course, i can't say right away how it has been in the past, atleast third parties have been able to make software for Windows and M$ has come up with some simple computer languages, such as Basic.

Also, it's wrong to say that Nintendo "adapted" Apples business strategy, since Nintendo basically have had its strategy before Apple was founded. Of course, it depends how and to what extent you classify the business strategy.

Actually Windows has had the "converter", similar to Wine, since Win98, it didn't have OpenGL native support (if i recall, only Win95 supported it natively). Anyway, i don't think they offer DirecX->Open source converter with their tools.