I swear all this stuff about Wii dev costs being low is a bit of a of a misconception. While I'm sure they are much less then developement on the HD consoles, it's generally accepted to have a hit on the Wii you need a far bigger marketing budget, which of course increases risk. I remember reading in the PS2 days EA would normally match their developement costs with their marketing budget, and marketing a game on the Wii is more important than it has been on any previous console.

Sure enough there have been a few hits with seemingly no advertising (As far as I am aware) on the Wii but how often have we seen a Wii game flop and people blame the publisher for not putting enough into marketing? I'm not totally convinced with Wii is as 'risk-free' as you make out, hell, the biggest flop this year I'd say on the HD consoles has been Mirror's edge and that's going to well surpass half a million.

As for EA, I don't blame them for keeping up support on the HD Consoles, as that's where their biggest brand. EA Sports, still see's the most support. It's where their largest fanbase is. I do agree that striving for 'bigger and better' games with larger budgets may not be the best approach, but are we really in a position to question a giant like EA? I'm sure they've got a far better idea at what they're doing then anyone here.

third parties aren't supporting the wii coz most of their action/rpg/strategy ips are made for core gamers. yknow, gamers who actually play games long.

the wii's user base is primarily casual. they play the waggle nintendo things for party kicks and whatnot. so when you see call of duty flop like hell on the wii, you understand why: there are very few core gamers who buy games for the wii.

so third parties have no choice but to go to the 360 and the PS3 because the wii's audience just simply doesn't buy their established ips. you think that metal gear would sell on the wii? no way. the casuals wouldn't even understand what it is.

in the end of it all, its basically because the third parties cannot let go of their established ips. they aren't willing to make shovelware for the wii, and prefer to make blockbuster AAA titles for the core gamer for varied reasons (if you ask Kojima, he said it is his duty. whatever). i think we need to be thankful for that.

Just like ubisoft isn't making imagine/petz for nintendo consoles? Yeah, sure... :)

(Actually, I hope others will follow.)

Mass Effect 2

Here we go, case in point - but let me stress I am not promoting Wii games here just publishers making brands that have more of a mass market appeal irregardless of which system (Wii/DS/PS2 just happen to have more of a mass market audience) instead of just gambling mega bucks on core games making mega sales.

A look at Ubisoft's sales expectation based on initial sales:

http://www.edge-online.com/news/ubisofts-software-sales-projections

As Ubisoft navigates the holiday shopping season, the Paris-based publisher expects a number of titles to sell over 1 million units.

Speaking at the UBS Global Media Conference on Wednesday, Ubisoft CFO Alain Martinez revealed the following sales targets for new major titles:

Brothers in Arms (September): 1.5 million

Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party (November): 1.5 million

Higher expectations than the previous Rayman installment, which achieved sales of 1.2 million.
Sales are up 50 percent in the U.S.
"It's typically a Christmas product," said Martinez.

Far Cry 2 (October): 2.5-3 million

2 million of those sales expected to come from Europe, Middle East and Asia sales; the rest coming from the U.S. "It didn't perform as well as [Ubisoft] would have liked in the U.S."
"We're seeing after the launch of Call of Duty and the launch of Gears of War, Far Cry 2 is ramping up," the exec said.
 
 Shaun White Snowboarding (November): 2-2.5 million

"We do feel comfortable that we should be hitting the 1 million target on the Wii, maybe probably exceeding it," Martinez revealed about the Balance Board-compatible version.

Tom Clancy's EndWar (November): 1.4 million

The CFO expects the strategy game to hit "the low end" of expectations.

Martinez also said that casual games are "outperforming" company expectations, although he did not release an updated sales figure.

Performance of the newly released Prince of Persia is a mixed bag, the exec said. "In the first four or five days of sales, we're faring better than the prior Prince of Persia, but lower than Far Cry."

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time sold 4 million copies over the course of two years.

Martinez believes that the new Prince of Persia, released early this month, has a mainstream appeal, and "therefore, has longer legs."

Now consider HD games need to sell about 1m to clear a profit whereas most Wii games a mere 250k (500K maybe for AAA titles).  So Brother in Arms, End War and Shawn White HD are all profitable (presumed) but not by much.  Certainly not by much when compared to the profit those same game sales would have generated last generation which would have been substancial.  Far Cry & PoP are the only 'hits' here for HD.  And PoP's success is acredited to it's 'mass appeal'

RRR3 at 1.5m & Shaun White on Wii at 1m+ are both huge profit generators due to lower development costs but similar sales. 

But the real story is that Ubisoft says it's casual games are outperforming expectations.  So while many of the these core titles are not big profit generators anymore (compared to last gen) thanks to development costs, they are making it up with a healthy mix of core/casual game brands.

Note: I'm not bashing core games.  These games are all profitable and should continue to be made but the profit margin on them have all shrunk so by developing games that appeal to a wider (PoP) or different target markets (Shaun White) and a strong line-up of casual brands Ubisoft is in a strong place financially and can continue to make the core games you all want to see without any undo risk to their bottom line.  Other companies should take note.

"...Still, I think that publishers have been lagging behind in terms of innovation versus what Nintendo has done." - Martinez

Believe what you want about the lack of core gamers on Wii. Don't look at Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures, Naruto: Clash of Ninja Revolution, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, The House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return as they soon turn Platinum (1m) and a few other games that soon will turn Gold (500k), it might burn your eyes (not really, but still). 

And let's look at all the Xbox 360 games I found in the database:

11/17/05 - 2.27m - Call of Duty 2
11/17/05 - 1.45m - Perfect Dark Zero
11/18/05 - 0.29m - Quake 4

03/28/06 - 0.22m - Far Cry: Instincts Predator (missing others sales)
04/11/06 - 0.44m - Battlefield 2: Modern Combat (missing others sales)
07/10/06 - 0.27m - Prey (missing others sales)
10/31/06 - 0.61m - F.e.a.r

03/06/07 - 1.46m - Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2
06/07/07 - 0.24m - Call of Juarez
06/25/07 - 0.53m - The Darkness
06/25/07 - 0.11m - Hour of Victory
08/21/07 - 2.12m - Bioshock
09/25/07 - 8.60m - Halo 3
11/06/07 - 2.18m - Call of Duty 3
10/10/07 - 0.83m - The Orange Box
11/05/07 - 6.72m - Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
11/13/07 - 0.13m - Soldier of Fortune: Payback (missing others sales)

02/05/08 - 0.75m - Turok
02/12/08 - 0.11m - Dark Messiah of Might and Magic Elements (missing others sales)
02/26/08 - 0.49m - Frontlines: Fuel of War
03/11/08 - 0.61m - Condemned 2: Bloodshot
05/27/08 - 0.29m - Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
06/23/08 - 1.06m - Battlefield: Bad Company
07/07/08 - 0.40m - Unreal Tournament III
08/31/08 - 0.67m - Mercenaries 2: World in Flames
10/21/08 - 0.68m - Far Cry 2
11/04/08 - 0.42m - 007: Quantum of Solace
11/04/08 - 0.02m - Spark Unlimited
11/11/08 - 2.69m - Call of Duty: World at War
11/17/08 - 0.65m - Left 4 Dead

Of 30 games, 9 has sold over 1m as of yet, 21 has not. At least one more game will turn Platinum. Not so good for a hardcore powerhouse, I think.

Now have a look at Wii (all FPS games I could find again):

11/14/06 - 0.58m - Call of Duty 3 (missing others sales)
11/19/06 - 1.07m - Red Steel
12/12/06 - 0.07m - Far Cry Vengeance

08/27/07 - 1.45m - Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (FPS like at least)
11/13/07 - 0.25m - Medal of Honor Heroes 2 (missing others sales)

09/23/08 - 0.02m - Brothers in Arms: Double Time (missing others sales)
11/04/08 - 0.17m - 007: Quantum of Solace
11/11/08 - 0.20m - Call of Duty: World at War

Of 8 games, 2 has sold over 1m, if we take away Metroid Prime 3, 1 has.

In my mind, I actually think that Xbox 360 has not done that much better then Wii with FPS games. More games has been released on Xbox 360, it has had one extra year to build up a core audience, developers has taken chances with Xbox 360 from the beginning without taking a pause, not so with Wii.

Why would people with more then one current gen console or someone Who wants Call of Duty and a HD console buy a gimped Wii version of the game? Some single platform Wii gamers don't even want to touch the Wii version of multiplat FPS games. Lots of FPS games is also absent from Wii, so no looking at sales there. With The Conduit, Red Steel 2 and the next Call of Duty on Wii, we might see a nice uprising on FPS Wii sales, I think.

And yeah, I don't think Wii FPS games would sell crazy like as they do on Xbox 360 if they did good. I mostly just look at if a game has sold over 1m, or not. Going more on topic, how many games of the FPS games on Xbox 360 that does not sell over 1m makes profit?

To me it looks like publishers if overflooding Xbox 360 with more games then sustainable. Making fewer titles might lead to less titles flopping in sales as the sales wont be spread thin between lots of gamers, if there is less games out there.

(There is possibility of any kind of wrong in my lists of games.)