I was planning on buying Sim Castaway DK11 - is it really good? MySims just looks too shallow for me.

Windbane this thread is perfectly legitimate and an valid discussion, but that aside don't think anyone is blind to the rather obvious motives illustrated in your dubiously insistant claims. I know the Wii is bur in the side of many gamers not fond of Nintendo's upset in the gaming world, and who can blame them? But it'll take more than EA's fickle choice in hinder the Wii's success.

This isn't just "pish-poshing" bad news for the sake of defending the Wii either, this is puting into context a gaming genre that means little to most gamers by a publisher which evoke's little more than contempt from an even larger majority.

I don't think it's limited to EA, though.  EA is probably the worst example so far, even though they attempted a Wii cash-in with Boogie.  EA hasn't exactly made me happy as a PS3 owner either.  We'll see what happens next year with both the PS3 and Wii.  I have both, so I'm expecting a little catch up so I don't have to get a 360 and can just upgrade my PC for Bioshock.  I'd like to see a PC and/or PS3 version of Mass Effect, too, which EA now has control over since they bought Bioware.

First, I want to say that I totally agree with Windbane that EA is struggling on the Wii -- not just in terms of the games already released, but in terms of what has not been. They clearly are not sure what to do about the Wii, even as they say they need to jump on board.

With that said:

Spore was just announced on the Wii: http://kotaku.com/gaming/confirmed/its-official-spore-coming-to-the-wii-315961.php

Rock Band IS coming to the Wii: http://wii.ign.com/articles/777/777553p1.html

So a few of these claims are unfounded (Since Windbane did specifically bring up Rock Band...). I think the real problem is obvious: sports. Sports, sports, sports. EA's bread and butter are sports and racing games, neither of which appear to be especially strong genres on the Wii. Therefore, I wouldn't be surprised if Skate, NCAA Football (Which they did say was coming to the Wii in 09, but since Madden on Wii bombed I'm going to wait and see if that changes), and other major sports franchises continue to get slighted because it's simply not in the Wii's wheelhouse.

I do expect, however, that both the well established Sims arm of EA and the newly established Casual arm will both put a great deal of emphasis on the Wii.  

 Couldn't have said it better myself. 

Since Spore is already annouced for the Wii, and not the Xbox360 and PS3, it is interesting to read the title of this thread again. I mean I would rather have spore anyday over nhl. That being said, windbanes point was valid, though his argument was much flawed. 

I am also happy to read that windbane is satisfied with his PS3 and the games. My only question is why does he think he has to ruin it for the Wii owners. With recent announcements such as monster hunt and spore, you could guess that more exclusive games will come to Wii.   

With how expensive videogame development is becomming and how different the Wii is from the PS3/XBox 360 shifting the focus of large publishers is a lot like turning an oil tanker; it can be done but it takes a long time.

Before the XBox 360 was released companies like EA began switching their development resorces away from "previous generation" consoles towards "current generation" HD consoles; being how similar in performance these systems were going to be these publishers believed they could share the majority of their resources across platforms to manage expolding development costs. I don't think in 2004 these companies anticipated a low performance console being as popular as the Wii has become.

Until the Wii was released many publishers only had token support planned for the Wii because it was their belief that improved graphics were what really sold consoles.

Now, EA has spent so much money developing games for the PS3 and XBox 360 that they simply can not cancel "Fifa 2008" (as an example) in order to divert resources towards the Wii to produce NHL 2008 for the Wii; this means they have to either create a new developer, buy a developer or wait until a developer becomes "free" before they can move forward with NHL 2008 for the Wii. I know for a fact that EA has been buying developers and creating new internal development teams to handle Wii projects and it is (remarkably) likely that development resources will be shifted towards the Wii as projects are completed; this shift may be as simple as reducing the number of developers working on Madden/NHL/Fifa 2009 because they already have a working game and can produce their next version as a "Roster Update", or as complicated as converting a development team to produce Wii projects after they finish their XBox 360/PS3/PSP/PS2 game.

Happy, I don't think it's as simple as "just give it time, Wii development will ramp up" anymore.

I think Madden 08 for Wii is often taken out of proportion -- many people use that single game to "prove" that people don't buy Wii games and no games are selling and OMG it's doomed. Clearly, games are selling; the Wii's attach rate was similar to or higher than the PS3's in the last quarter (the Wii sold 2.5 times as much software, with approximately 2.5 times as much hardware sold, even discluding Wii sports). 

But one think I think is fair to assume, especially when combined with the results for Fifa in Europe, is that the Wii is particularly week with sports games. I think at this point, that's a fair assumption. As such, it isn't just that these companies need to get their software on to the Wii, they also have to figure out which software to get on to the Wii.

For example, I think that not putting Skate on the Wii was the correct choice for EA -- even if they had developmental resources available. On the flipside, I think Spore is an excellent fit for the Wii, and it was the correct move to push resources towards that project. 

EA can go implode for all I care.

I agree Bod. The Wii has not proven it can sell any sports games that aren't made by Nintendo. However, the Wii has been reasonable successful with a wide variety of video game genres. Looking at it's list of successful games (over 500K) there are games from every genre except Sports and RPG (of which there are none). Even in the RPG category, DQ: Swords sold almost 500K in Japan alone. There are also games like Trauma Center that only sold .48 million but were created on a budget and very successful for their companies.

I look at FIFA08 and Madden 08 sales for the Wii and it says it all.... LOL