So sales are king with or without third party support.

Where is the third party support?

The myth of third-party support again... Reliance on third-party support is a crutch, historically. If you actually look back at the most successful systems prior to the PS1, those systems almost carried themselves solely on first-party releases. And I don't just mean the NES and SNES; the Master System's and Genesis' top-sellers were almost all Sega-made or Sega-released too. Essentially, this reliance on third parties to prop up the system only emerged in the context we've seen when the PS1 came along. Prior to that, it was not at all surprising to see the console's manufacturer be the primary and practically only successful developer on the system (and in the early years of those systems, the only developer, period!).

Dont clutch at straws render either it does what it says on the tin or not.

So... basically you're saying that the NES, SNES, SMS, and Genesis all succeeded because of third-party support in spite of the fact that most of their sales were first-party? Is that what I'm hearing you say? I'm just not sure where you take issue with my statement is all.

I doubt it has peaked. The casual market hasn't been saturated yet, there's still room to grow. It's even been grabbing people from the traditional pool of gamers.

This thread just got awesome.

If HW and first party SW sell at a profit, not at loss, for Nintendo it's OK, so much worse for third party SW houses not being able to take advantage from Wii success. The situation will be that Nintendo is near monopolist in its own very big niche, but with a "niche" as big as 50% of the market, how could they be disappointed? The only risk is becoming arrogant, Nintendo just must'nt deceive itself into believing that it can do without third party forever after: this situation must be considered peculiar to Wii and Nintendo must just do its best to persuade third party that they are welcome whenever they want to join.