I'm just wondering if the theory that Nintendo didn't release anything big early on this year was to give the third parties a "window".

That theory really makes no sense, though. I mean, why would you make less money on software sales, where you get all the money for yourself, to give a chance for 3rd party sales, where you only reap licensing fees (and those fees aren't delivered per title, right?)

I thought they were collected per title produced.

Also keep in mind Nintendo i believe is the only producer of Wii discs.

Yeah, but they only get a royalty for each third-party game sold, whereas they get the whole enchilada for first-party games. Financially, first party >>> third-party. Plus, Nintendo's not exactly the type of company that screams "neighborly" to me. They may not be as openly greedy as before, but they're not exactly humanitarians either...

I don't think so, why would Nintendo lose an oportunity to make even more money? It's not like 3rd party games can't sell when there's a 1st party game getting released. In fact a big 1st party game like Wii Fit opened the door to many new casual and new types of games, that wouldnt have sold had WiiFit not been a success.

This emptyhalf and last year's slow 2nd half, in other words, this past year has been pretty slow in regards to 1st party games. Even with a whole year to launch great games and huge projects none of the 3rd parties even tried. Now I think this opportunity may never show up again, not taht it means their games won't be successful, but now they won't be in a world where Nintendo doesnt release games anymore.

I think this past year was empty mainly because Nintendo believed that they didn't need to launch many games to sell HW. They were right, but to a certain point. Now when the first half finishes and Wii is down YoY, and with Japan barely having interest on the Wii anymore, we will see if they launch more games or not. I knew this was gonna happen, you can sell a console with the premise of a few games, but not for that long. People need new things and great experiences, or else they will simply buy another console or stop using it, like what's happening with Japanese Wii owners. (According to Iwata himself). Hopefully the Japanese trend doesn't move to the West before Wii Sports Resort launches.

Don't that stand to make more also by releasing their titles at X-mas?

Well from the sounds of it, Nintendo is reloading not rebuilding. Wonder what they got in the second half. But yes Wii software and hardware were expected to be down a little bit when you compare the releases of early last year to this. There was nothing Ninty could have released int he first semester of this year to compete with Wii Fit, Mario Kart Wii, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Hell there's not much any other developer in the world could have released to counter that.

That's true, last year's 1st half was gigantic. I hope this second half bodes as well, if not better for them.

Not as much as other companies (evergreen titles and all that). Plus, you have to remember that Iwata publicly said that he expected Wii Music and Animal Crossing to be much bigger than they were. They thought they had their holiday mega-hits lined up. They just misread the market.

From that viewpoint, we at Nintendo have to reflect on domestic Wii software deployment in the former half of this year. Like what had been to be released in the former half of this year was postponed to the latter, we were not able to reach the original goal – to regularly make new proposals.

Seems like he's saying they had more games planned for the first half of this year but they got delayed.. I think they would have wanted Wii Sports Resort in particular out April/May as they had said 'Spring' previously and who knows what else may have missed the first half.. We'll find out at E3 I'd say.