ok, the way the console world usually work is this. You have a steady flow of AAA titles or else people will stop buying the consoles. You needed to have games to move consoles period. Now, we look at the Wii's situation. The Wii in essence is selling regardless of many big releases (as shown buy holidays 08). Now Nintendo has been releasing a decent amout of casual titles, but the thing is casual titles just keep selling as the Wii keeps selling, casual titles are less affected by the size of the userbase that they are initially released on than core games are. So that brings me to 2 basic ideas.
1. Nintendo does not need to release core games right now to move consoles, so they chose not to. They can maximize the sales of core series when in 09 holidays and beyond the Wii userbase is 60 million heading into it. Why release Zelda in 08 on 35 million consoles when the Wii does not need anything to help move console, why not wait until 09 when the userbase is 60 mil heading into the holidays, and it MIGHT actually move some consoles (right now wii is sold out, so it would not move MORE consoles, although it would move some). If you have not noticed, all of the really core games nintendo has released so far were announce BEFORE the Wii went into Sellout mode for 2 years and counting. MP3, SMG, SSBB, MKWii. Notice, this years E3 was the first since it took #1 from the 360... ok which leads me to my second point
2. Nintendo is not going to be satisfied keeping casuals, casual forever- Nintendo is giving them time to get into gaming, and starting to want something more before it drop all of its bridge games on them. (DK, Zelda, SMG 2, Kid Ic, Star Fox). I believe that not only will the userbase of the Wii be bigger by the time they start dropping them on, but a higher % of the users will be willing to play something besides Wii titles, and MK... I think MK Wii is doing this right now, it is showing the casuals how much fun alittle gameplay depth can be.
Again for all of you worried Nintendo has gone all casual, and will not do core games anymore... think about it, Nintendo has to know traditional gamers buy more games, and make them more money. Also, casual gamers my move on to something else that is new.. Nintendo needs to "catch" a few of them.
Well that all i have for now, basically I believe nintendo may even have a few title close to completion they are just sitting on because they dont need them right now, and it consoles past they may have had to push them out a bit early....
End of 2009 Predictions (Set, January 1st 2009)
Wii- 72 million 3rd Year Peak, better slate of releases
360- 37 million Should trend down slightly after 3rd year peak
PS3- 29 million Sales should pick up next year, 3rd year peak and price cut
