Aside from endless stupid mini-games collections which the vast majority of publishers don't understand why they sell or not I don't really see any 3rd parties capturing that 'social' aspect on the Wii.
What games to you really want to come together and play on Wii that aren't Nintendo? Guitar Hero - sure. Boom Blox is a great one. But Shaun White is fun with a group but that's about it.

With the Atari 2600 the games were short, fun and you'd usually pass the controller back and forth in an attempt to beat the other person's score (2 player). It was fun to do together.

But what do we get on Wii? De Blob? Deadly Creatures? MadWorld? Essentually all single player experiences that aren't really fun for anyone but the player.

HoTD:Overkill of course 2 can play but no kids. No way.

Not trying to critize those games per se, but the prof is right, you want a really successful game on Wii, we need more innovative and social games like Boom Blox, Buzz, Singstar, In The Movies. Games that people want to play together.

And if someone would make a Wii RPG that recreated the social fun of 80's D&D sessions, so a group of 4 could dungeon-crawl together (easily done baldur's gate style with each Wiimote acting as a mouse) they would have a massive hit on their hands for exactly that reason.

 What happens to the people that only like epic single-player experiences?

that's a bit of a misconception, both pacman and e.t. came out in 1982 and were treated as the big release for the 2600, and they were flops and didn't help the situation,

but at this point the 2600 was already 5 years old with an original intended shelf life of 3 years (hence the gimped 6507 as opposed to the 6502, 1 button controller,  and limitation on the TIA and so forth),

and had built something out of nothing. dedicated systems and the studio 2 and the channel f weren't sufficient nor were they released  enough ahead of the 2600 to learn from

The fate of the industry was now with the colecovision and 5200, neither of which delivered a worthy successor to the 2600

the vectrex joined the party to late, and the intellivision was competition for 2600  and already 4 years old when the crash occurred.  Neither of them could carry on for the 2600 either

     I think Pac-Man must have come out earlier than 1982 because the one I have looks more like a vcs game (the label on the cartridge more closely resembles the label of (Haunted House, Asteroids, Superman).  A couple of years after Pac-Man was released, we were getting the silver labeled 2600 games (and no one was using the name VCS anymore).  These silver labeled games tended to be more advanced and featured better graphics than VCS games.  They included Ms. Pac-Man, Kangaroo, Jungle Hunt, Phoenix, Vanguard, Centipede, Crazy Climber, RealSports Baseball and Tennis, ET, Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Swordquest games.   These games were in my mind all released a couple of years after Pac-Man, yet sometime before the crash, and several years before the NES and 7800.   

nope, came out march 1982

No reason the same game couldn't be played single player - just like Baldur's Gate or Pac-man are.