http://wii.ign.com/articles/792/792772p1.html

"May 30, 2007 - Publisher Ubisoft was one of the first third parties to recognize the potential of Nintendo's Wii console and back the platform with a wealth of titles. The company's headlining launch games, Red Steel and Rayman Raving Rabbids, were both exclusively created for Wii and have in the six months since they released each become million-sellers around the world. However, many of the developer's other efforts - all of them quick and unimpressive ports of previously released games on other systems - have faired poorly both from a critical and retail perspective. In an interview with leading German news magazine Spiegel, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot and European head Alain Corre admitted that the publisher was too quick to rush these titles to the market.

"We made mistakes," they told the magazine. According to Spiegel, Ubisoft wanted to be first to capitalize on Wii and in its haste to release product it sacrificed the quality of the titles. Ubisoft has reportedly learned from its mistakes, though, and is promising that the quality of its forthcoming Wii projects will be significantly better."

http://www.edge-online.com/news/ubisoft-well-have-quotnintendo-likequot-quality

"At the BMO Capital Markets' Annual Interactive Entertainment Conference in New York City on Tuesday, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot delivered a presentation that was not short on praise for Nintendo. He was particularly enamored with Nintendo's success in both the handheld and console markets, as well as their strategy of attracting casual gamers outside of the usual hardcore gaming market.

"[Nintendo's mass market strategy] is very profitable for Nintendo, and very profitable for all third-party publishers," he said. "...Because [the strategy] is working, we create more product [for Nintendo platforms] and this will actually bring more people into the industry. The Wii is going to continue to do extremely well with no limit to growth.""

"He also revealed some figures on the current costs of development, stating that DS games only need to sell around 100,000 units to become profitable. By comparison, a game developed for PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 has to sell upwards of 1.3 million units to achieve profitability."

Publishers =/= developers.  The question being discussed was how much the developers make, you know, the people who do the programming and designing.  According to your own article they get 45%

As for your Reuter's article, I have a few things to say. Quoted below.

Guillemot said the company's casual games business was "extremely profitable" and helped to finance the initially costly development of games for next-generation consoles -- Sony's (6758.T) PlayStation3 and Microsoft's (MSFT.O) Xbox 360.

Good find on that, I was previously unaware of any dev who had actually said that.  Note though that while he said that this occurred in the past (most likely before they brought any HD games to market, but after their last gen games stopped selling), there is no indication that casual funding of HD projects is the status quo at Ubisoft, or anywhere else. Hd development costs have come down in the past two years, and nobody can rationally argue that game like Assassin's Creed and Rainbow Six: Vegas haven't made loads of money for them.

I believe that both are losing the battle for the hearts and minds of most gamers to the Wii, but in the absence of the Wii and Nintendo that the consoles would follow a generational progression from the PS1 -> PS2 -> PS3/Xbox 360 sharing X % of the market between them. So whilst I do doubt that they would have bought the Wii, but I do believe Microsoft would be doing even better and the same would apply to Sony, but especially Microsoft with the $200 Arcade.

The PS2 outsold the PS1 even though the latter was really just a performance upgrade on the former. So I believe that the current generation would out perform the previous, following that same model except it would not have grown by nearly as much. If a graphical improvement wasn't apreciated by some then I don't believe that the HD consoles would have nearly the sales strength they currently have, so in that respect they are able to draw in the people who refused to play games that "look stupid", and I used to know a few.

It should be pretty obvious that a mere graphical upgrade was not the reason for the PS2's success. The HD consoles only have sales strength outside of the holidays. As a matter of fact, the only non-Nintendo console with strong sales in all regions throughout the year is the PSP.

The Wii from the start was at a price point that people are willing to pay, and the most important thing, it offered a new gaming experience that appealed to masses and managed to bring in an entirely new group of gamers that never would have bought a PS3 or 360. The PS3 and 360 simply don't offer this. The Wii also has a steady stream, a strong, standing library of games that appeals to every demographich whereas the PS3 and 360 have only big name exclusives that appeal to core and hardcore gamers. Combine that with their very high entry prices, and there's no way in hell that they would have sold 85 million consoles each. The people who are buying the Wii right now simply would have never spent that much money on consoles that really don't offer anything new other than a graphical upgrade.

You act as though I don't want things to change and improve again.

And I will keep playing my Wii, just as I continue playing my other legacy systems. Do yourself a favor, and quit playing games right now, because they don't look as good as they will in the future.

hahaha, that doesn't make any sense. This is why I enjoy these forums, reading 12-year old Wii players just crack me up! lol

That sad thing is... you are the one that sounds like a 12 year old in that discourse.