A complaining minority will always be the loudest, as they have the most incentive to take the initiative to make new posts and post multiple replies to others.  They are hoping to bring about a change in a situation they don't like.  The happy majority will post once and then go back to their beloved games.

The odd thing with the store analogy is that many stores are entirely willing to listen to requests from their consumers and bring in new products (at least on a trial basis) when they're requested to do so. Sometimes there are limitations on a product that prevent this (another store may be an exclusive dealer), and some stores have business practicies that make this difficult, but rarely would they completely ignore the demands of the customer.

Basically, the best way to warp this into a store analogy is that EA is a big-box electronics retailer and when the iPod is announced a lot of their customers approach them and ask them to bring in Black iPods because they're so cool; of course, EA doesn't listen to these demands because (after all) customers want the high-quality audio from SACD and DVD-A and no one will buy this iPod.

A year later, after electronics retailers that carried the iPod have had massive success while those that haven't EA is forced to make announcements that they need to bring in the iPod for the good of the company. In response to this they get tons of emails and letters from their customers asking for them to bring in a Black iPod. EA, after determining that the iPod was a fad that was selling to people who were not that smart and only wanted colorful things, brings in pink and purple iPods

Another year passes, and EA is forced to announce that (even with their healthy margins from the iPod) they are still not performing that well and they will support the iPod more heavily. Once again they get tons of requests from their customers asking for them to carry a Black iPod. EA decides to bring in Navy Blue, Grey, and White iPods to go along with the pink and purple iPods they are already carrying and begins to wonder why they get so much angry email and letters from customers who used to be so supportive of their store.

Looks like the biggest issue lies with western 3rd parties.

It's ironic that Sega gives such great support for the Wii.

The trouble with that line of thinking, is that it's a no-win situation for Nintendo as far as third party support goes.  If we can agree the Wii is at the stage before there has been any full fledged effort by third parties (yes, the definition of 'full fledged effort' is up for debate, but let's assume it to be true for the purposes of this post):

If the games don't sell well, third parties conclude there is no market for their games on the system, and stop all further development for it.

If the games do sell well, third parties think their efforts are 'good enough', and treat it as a green light to keep dumping shovelware on it.

The top 2 HD console sellers are third-party titles ( GTA4 and CoD 4).

I don't think any Third party has even sold 30% of what the top 4 Wii title have sold though...

Err ?

You've been to WallMart recently ?

For most food products they carry 3-4 brands at most.

For clothes it's even more restricted.

And I would want to see how you convince them to carry a new product as a customer, heck most producers already face a very tough time to have them carry their own products...

And yeah, WallMart is the store with the most traffic in NA, but it far from have every brand people are used to buying...

If I go to Walmart and don't find the brand of orange juice that I like, I will find another brand of orange juice that should still be good; and then I can choose from one of those.  Now if I was picky and really wanted a particular brand of orange juice, I'll go hunt it down elsewhere.  The problem is that there are no good brands at Walmart, they all suck, so of course I'm going to complain.  Why go to Walmart in the first place?  Because they have my favorite brand of peanut butter at a great price.

Now, I want to see Street Fighter IV on Wii; if I was picky and really wanted to play SFIV, I'd just buy the 360 version, it's just that I prefer my Wii and would play the Wii version if I had the choice.  Or maybe I just wanted to play a good fighter that doesn't have "Smash" in the title, in which case any fighter would do, but the selection is so poor.  If Capcom released Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, then I'd play that, but the odds of it coming out in America are slim to none.  What I want is not a specific game, I just want better games in general; I want third parties to start taking the Wii seriously, like the market leader it is, and to stop with crappy, small, chinsy cash-ins.

Walmart is probably the best known exception for being amazingly willing to add products on a whim because their customers ask for them, primarily because they focus on the highest volume products and purchase as a chain in order to get the best deals. With this in mind you can go to their website (http://walmartstores.com/contactus/feedback.aspx) select 'Product Questions' and request that they carry a particular product, and after investigating whether it can acceptably meet their volume requirements they may begin carying a product in store.

The interesting thing about most modern stores is that they have websites where their "Contact Us" section almost always has a "Comments and Suggestions" area where a real person in their corporate office gets an email when you make a comment, filters out the crazy and vulgar comments ("Stop stealing my Brain Waves" is not particularly useful to any company) and then passes them onto important people in the marketing department (or other relevant departments). Being that only 1 in 1000 customers ever bother to send comments, and they typically don't send comments regularly, there usually isn't much of a filter between your suggestion and the VP of Marketing or the Executive in charge of purchasing so if you make a suggestion there is a high chance that it will be taken seriously.

I speak from experience on this ... Quite often I see a product available at a store (or someone I know has bought it) and if it is not available at my local store I ask for it. Awhile back I mentioned talked to the manager at the local grocery storeand mentioned that I had seen sliced cheese (not processed cheese) and was wondering whether they could sell it at their store so I wouldn't have to make multiple stops when I shop for groceries. He told me he would look into what was available from his suppliers and (if they had a similar product) he would start to stock it. Unsurprisingly, the next week when I was grocery shopping there was a handfull of packages of pre-sliced cheese stocked right next to the processed cheese slices. Over the following weeks and months they started to bring in more and more of the real-cheese slices because it turned out that I wasn't the only one who wanted them, and they startted to take up a large portion of the cheese fridge.

This is (literally) the only time in my life where I have heard someone suggest that companies should (and do) ignore the requests of their customers.

The 3rd parties have, much to their detriment, responded to consumer demands -- the loud consumers, anyway. "RPGs!" "Shooters!" "Sports!" yell the noisy few. Looking at the "top 40", I'm going to have to say that those genres just aren't the big moneymakers on the Wii. They cost too much. They make too little.

Time to move on -- if EA makes a horror rail shooter, and you only own a Wii, you should be happy they are sticking their necks out for you, despite overwhelming evidence that they should be making fitness, casual, and kids gaming products. Since horror games seem to be about the only "mature" genre capable of doing decently on the Wii, I imagine 3rd parties will continue to experiment with them. Action Adventure, Shooters, RPGs, etc... just aren't gonna fly, unless they are not mature-themed, or in the case of RPGs, catered to the Japanese audience.

"History will show" that the 3rd parties gravitate toward the money. The Wii is not a hardcore gamer console, despite the fact that 3rd parties experiment when there's a vacuum in a particular mature genre (e.g. CoD:WaW in the Wii's nearly empty shooter genre). Why would anyone buy a Wii without checking the software library first? They bought it for the great games -- Mario, Zelda, WiiFit, Mario Kart, WiiSports, WiiPlay, Mario & Sonic @ the Olympics, Carnival Games, etc. They didn't buy it for would be hardcore games that aren't out yet, or may never see the light of day.

Why again should The Discovery Channel start showing John Woo flicks?

Choosing games to make isn't based on relative popularity, but whether a "pass mark" has been reached. Just because those games have "won" doesn't mean the losers should not exist. Just like WAW, yes, it sold much less than Wii Music but it exceeded the expectations of the developer. Hence the continued release of more COD titles is justified.

The only thing the games should compete against is themselves. Set a sales target and see if it is met. If it is met, it is a success and probably made enough money. Who cares how much more Wii Music sold? It's not like your ego is hurt because it sold less than that casual game.