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Two companies with a shrewd approach to minimum system requirements are Blizzard and Valve. Now, I don't want to overload you with a flurry of numbers. But if you compare the minimum specs for Blizzard and Valve titles like World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, Half-Life 2: The Orange Box, and Left 4 Dead with games like Crysis: Warhead, Call of Duty: World at War, and Fallout 3, you'll see that the former have designed their games to run on older, less-powerful machines. By doing so, they've made their games accessible to a wider audience.

Taking this back to consoles for a moment: Microsoft's Xbox 360 had a year's head start on the competition, and as its executives love to remind us, the bulk of all console sales during the last generation took place at $199 or less—the current entry-level price for 360. Sony was all set to achieve global domination coming off consecutive wins with PlayStation and PlayStation 2. Yet in just 24 months, Nintendo has blown past its rivals and continues to do so even though the 360 is now $50 cheaper than the Wii's suggested retail price. To put this Nintendominance in perspective, for the month of November, Wii (2.04 million) outsold Xbox 360 (836,000), PlayStation Portable (421,000), Playstation 3 (378,000), and PlayStation 2 (206,000) combined.

Now if that's Game Over as far as the console wars are concerned, why are the major developers and publishers continuing to spend the bulk of their budgets on Xbox 360, PS3, and high-end PC games? Part of it is because Nintendo's own games have historically dominated sales on its own platforms, and that's been true for Wii as well. Part of it is because the creatives and the suits at third-party publishers don't know how to address the expanded audience on the Wii; they've tried a number of things—some bad, some good—but many of their efforts have underperformed. Yet as Electronic Arts' well-publicized struggles demonstrate, the winner-take-all software market on 360, PS3, and high-end PC games can pose just as much risk to a publisher's bottom line.

Yes, the data show that the video-game industry's revenues continue to rise. But how sustainable is that when development budgets are tilted toward 360, PS3, and high-end PCs and away from the market-leading Wii and low-end PCs. If a remake of Resident Evil 4 sold extremely well on the Wii, surely there was an opportunity for Dead Space. The liberating sense of movement in Mirror's Edge could have translated well to the Wiimote and nunchuk. But because EA built those games for the top-of-the-line machines, the Wii wasn't even a possibility. So with Nintendo as top dog, I think it's time for publishers to throw it a much bigger bone by leading development on Wii, then up-porting the games to the more powerful systems, which should result in a larger addressable audience. (Hard-core gamers' flames coming in 3 … 2 … 1.)

source: N'Gai Croal

http://www.slate.com/id/2206243/entry/2206594/

http://www.n4g.com/NewsPending-247664.aspx

a good read.  it'll probably happen more often in the future.

It's more than just a matter of appealing to the expanded audiance. Most developers care about the product than the people who play them. So when they make a the high budget games that cater to the 16-28 demographic they believe that they should make it only for HD. This path is somewhat true. See that exact demographic will either have the target machine or both(Wii+HD). When the games comes out for all 3d or just those 2 that demographic won't chose the Wii version. Why because they use there second rate teams to mimic the HD, just not as good. So often it's a sub par version. Even if everything but the graphics are the same. The demographic will still buy the HD version because it's the same price, easier online, better graphics.

If however they did their highbudget action game for Wii only. Say Devil May Dry 5? or Ninja Gaiden 3.. then these gamers will either forfiet the game or buy it on the Wii.

What happens next. All the true fans of the franchise will buy on the whatever console in this example the Wii. Then it's the "others" market. Those who like the style, the combat or whatever. The game name is less important. This group represnts X% of the market. This percentage will be the same regardless on what console you refer too. Because of this X% for the Wii would produce more over all sales.

However that won't ever happen. Developers believe that when making their HB game that they are accessing the entire demographic. When that's not really the case. They are only accessing fans + other. But they don't want to take what they feel is a risk. They don't feel that the series fans will move with the game.

So to make it simple. Multiplat HB core title games will never do well on the Wii because it's multiplatform. They will never dedicate a HB core title on the Wii because they don't know how to sell it.

And MS and Sony should support such a move too. People won't migrate/upgrade to a new console unless they migrate game genres first.

It will happen. No matter what. Dominant market platform becomes the main developing platform for thirds. It is that way since the first gen consoles...

it will never happen, cause PS360 (+PC) will always sell more third parties software than on Wii. That's sad but it's the price to pay for laucnhing a GC+, as succesfull it can be.

Part of it is because Nintendo's own games have historically dominated sales on its own platforms, and that's been true for Wii as well.

He's mixing cause and outcome. The cause is actually that because 3rd parties didn't release games on Nintendo platforms, Nintendo dominated its platforms' sales.
Which is completely logical.

Part of it is because the creatives and the suits at third-party publishers don't know how to address the expanded audience on the Wii

And part of it is because they don't address at all the audience they know about.
What you do is address what you know about, and if the new audience doesn't bite, then you try things for them, while sustaining yourself with stuff for the known audience. This means genuine effort is made of course.

But this is not at all what they are doing, so they have no excuse.
All this revenue talk is BS. What good does it make if you post losses despite higher revenues?

 GC+?

In the same what Sony released the PS+ and Microsoft released the Xbox+

Ok, here's the thing! As long as X360 + PS3 software combined outsells or sells on-par with Wii software (3rd-party stuff, not the Nintendo titles included) then you won't see a lot of high-end 3rd-party titles!

They much more prefer the multi-HD-platform release to see higher sales with the both combined then on ONLY the Wii...

So; as long as 3rd-parties on Wii don't sell more then X360-PS3 3rd-party software combined you won't see a shift!

Conclusion: 3rd-parties will never shift to Wii en-mass! You'll definitely see some bigger games more often! But nothing compared to for example Death Space, Bioshock, Mass Effect, Gears of War etc...

Maybe Madworld comes close though! ^^... Heads-up!

I don't think third parties ever will. 360 brought in more dough for third parties than PS3 and Wii combined this gen so far.

As long as Nintendo doesn't come with HD Wii I won't see myself being all happy about it.