To blame Nintendo because others have trouble measuring up is certainly an interesting tactic.

That's like blaming the Yankees because the Pittsburgh Pirates have bad management. (For those of you not in the US, the Pirates would have relegated from baseball's top leagues if they did that in the US. They have had a record 15 straight losing seasons).

Isn't this a hangover from the GC days? 3rd parties were shit-scared to go with another Nintendo console until Nintendo themselves unleashed stellar selling titles which were driven by the uniqueness of the h/w

Then they pile in with drivel, now we see a bit of effort for some future titles but not that much - you only have to look at the current release schedule: Pirates vs Ninjas dodgeball...

The economic downturn will be the problem for 3rd parties producing quality titles: cheap product, massive userbase will be the attraction and that's why the wii line-up will resemble the PS2 one but without the costly GTAs of this world

Games like deBlob, World of Goo, Portal and Braid are all pretty good recent examples of developers who did something unusual for the time and made games that were more than "The same game we've made for 10 years, now with even better graphics" ... Hell, right now I would settle for third party publishers just taking a step outside of their "Generic FPS" ideology and to clone a Theif, DeusEx or Redneck Rampage game for a change...

I'd take a new Thief game in a heartbeat.

So who is quoted in the OP?

I think there'a a little truth in both sentiments (it is partly 3rd parties and partly Nintendo's own fault). I can certainly attest to the fact that there are a great many crap games coming out today and I find myself never finishing most of them out of boredom or frustration.
But Nintendo did make a choice; they did choose to make the one platform that used a different recipe and implemented older hardware and they knew full well that the only other similar platform this gen woulr be their very own DS and this placed 3rd parties in a difficult postition.
They were/are forced to leap in one of two directions, possibly with the risk of a tough recovery either way.
It is always hard on publishers and producers or manufacturers when markets diverge, as well as the predicament some consumers may find themselves in.
As long as Nintendo opt to be headed in a different direction, there will be, for most dev's, incentive to build their games around the possibility of publishing on three platforms rather than one and the eventual decline and halt of PS2 sales is not aiding Nintendo's cause either.

We'll see how it pans out, nothing is dead certain in regards to 3rd parties but like I've said quite a few times now; any 3rd party who hasn't spun around by now probably won't this gen, not in a big way at any rate and this goes both ways of course (allthough, in my mind there is no doubt who drew the shortest straw so far). Nintendo's sole task from here on out should be shedding that weighty and somewhat unfortunate image they developed, intentionally or otherwise, in the previous two gens in order to gain back the favour of 3rd parties.
But, let us not forget, after all, that Nintendo once dominated the industry like no one else ever had and still haven't.

And nintendo doesn't do this? Ever hear of the term: don't fix what isn't broken? There's a reason they keep making these games. It's because people buy them. When Halo sells so many copies, others are inspired to tap the market. Sony had no FPS games last gen now their most expensive game is an FPS. In contrast, how many copies did your inspirational games sell? Sure, they're cheaper but it seems to me that most publishers are looking to create their own COD franchise not make a little profit of small titles here and there.

I myself was a big JRPG gamer last gen. However, due to their lacking on the ps3 and even in general this gen, i had to adjust and try other games and it's not bad at all.

I agree. Most of the Wii's top selling games are first party. They just don't know how to advertise or promote their third party games.

But what if it isn't working and the companies are going banrkupt because they're producing the same game at a higher development cost to lower and lower sales because people are getting bored of the formula? What if the games are becomming lower in quality because their focus is entirely on things which don't improve the fun of their games?

Can you really argue that the Medal of Honor and Need For Speed strategy is working for EA?

How about Take 2, is the couple of decent games they're producing a year really making up for the mountain of expensive crap they produce?

Did Unreal Tournament 3, Stranglehold, Blacksite: Area 51, and Hour of Victory save Midway from going bankrupt?

The fact is that (while the strategy may be working for some of Nintendo's games) third party publishers will continue to go bankrupt unless they break this pattern.

It is Nintendo's fault because when Nintendo realises one of their titles, many third party titles are forgotten. In this sense, I like that the end of 2008 only brought us Wii Music and Animal Crossing. At the very least, games like Call of Duty, Shaun White's Snowboarding, Sonic Unleashed and others had decent sales.

Trying not to dwell on that, I think that one of the biggest reasons so many bad games are released is because it's the perception that bad games do indeed sell. For example, Carnival Games has the metacritic score of 56 yet it's a multi-million seller. Also, Nintendo's not innocent of this. Wii Music has the metacritic score of 63 yet it's also a multi-million seller. To try and make some connection, bad games are easy to make and sell so that's what to go for.

In summary, there's little movitation to make interesting/good games with the Wii's control scheme because it's just as profitable to make a 'new Carnival Games' or 'new Wii Music.'