If the Wii was HD this generation It probably would of been the Atari crash all over again.

Not due to interest... but just... pretty much everyone but the big guys going broke.  They'd own EVERYBODY and treat the franchises like they do their "select" titles.

Such compelling proof, how can I argue against that?

Montana I'm just giving my personal experience, if you have more evidence either way, I'd be very happy to know. I think when Nintendo says the market is shrinking, with the amount of data they collect, they probably know what they're talking about and this is something I've observed that may prove it.

Could be wrong of course but it's my observation.

I suspect if anything the Wii would allow certain niche developments to occour for consoles, but in reality its probably prolonging the death of a lot of poor business practices. I would say that theres a clear distinction between those who get it and those who don't and the developers in the latter category will find themselves pushed out of any console platform, the HD consoles just make that process a lot quicker. The shism in the market between the Wii and HD consoles limited the market for many games and caused the pain to come quicker and harder, otherwise the painful losses would have come later. The Wii accellerates the pain for the large developers/publishers and delays it for the smaller ones.

A game developer like Valve, Bethesda, Epic, Infinity Ward could be successful on pretty much any platform so to blame the platform for the success or failure of a game is pretty asanine. Whether a platform is crowded or not, whether a platform is expensive or not to create on, these things don't really matter for the truely successful developers. The thing with creative content like with movies, music, games is that the best tends to rise to the top and anything that the market doesn't aprove of sinks very rapidly to the bottom.

Innovation is irrelevant, either the game is good or it is not. A game isn't made better because it is innovative, it is made better because its a better game to play. If a game is better because of the Wiimote and more people find enjoyment from it then in that case the Wiimote is a successful interface for that game. Looking back on the innovative games, often aside from a feeling of nostalgia the games which last the test of time are the games which nail the fun to play aspect and are not praised for their innovation. A successful innovation has little shelf-life looking backwards as other games tend to incorperate the successful elements into future games.

While I agree with your sentiment, it really makes me upset that so many devs are too worried about winning their pissing contest in the graphics department to actually try with the Wii.

But, that's why I bought Madworld, The Conduit, Zack & Wiki, etc. It is also why I'll buy a few of the upcoming horror games and Monster Hunter Tri. Plus, the were and hopefully will be great games respectively.

What i still don't understand is why a videogame industry doin' all its "blockbusters" games for the PS2 for nearly six years has suddenly a problem with games in SD, and nearly the same kind of budget...

The PS2 was a very limited console (not that much power, and hard to program), and still, more than 130 millions people were glad to play it, many of its games are considered all-time classics and collected incredible reviews, and nobody in the industry had a word to say against it as a market leader... or nearly so...

Theres a "double standard" here i still don't get, and if PS2 fans still have found memories of all their favourite PS2 games, why don't they believe a console like Wii, with enough power to give some of the best graphics possible in SD, is a great system with a lot of potential?

And about the game dev's: we all saw they needed time to get used to the new tech of the wiimote... if Wii was also HD, the development time and the games budget would have exploded, and publishers would have been too afraid to take ANY risk, or test ANY new idea...

I mean c'mon: it's already the case with a "SD Wii", offering a very affordable dev' budget !!!

Instead, many people in the industry prefer to make games 2 or 3 times more exepensive, hoping they will all be million sellers to get the same kind of profits as previous gen...

It doesn't make sense, as only 60 X360 games, 30 PS3 games and maybe 40 or 50 other multiplatform games have done so this gen: this is suicidal, and this doesn't leave any room for "niche games" and "cult classics" with a limited appeal to the mainstream markets, both "hardcore" or "casual"...

And if a game fails, EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Capcom, Konami or Squarenix may balance the loss with the the profits of other games in their catalog: but what about all the smaller teams out there?

They just can't afford it... but still don't view Wii as a viable alternative, so what can we do?

The Wii is taking no bullet.

It's about the blockbuster model that the games industry has itself stuck in. Even to differentiate on the Wii they will still have to throw more money at better art, more programmers and more marketing dollars. The Wii has fixed none of that. It just started the bar a little lower.

The Wii is not some martyr from the Nintegods to save the industry. It's a platform that many own making it more likely to garner sales for their software. However given the splitting of demographics and multiple console ownership not even necessarily so.

I've always mantained that the 'failure' of the PS3 was a very good thing. If it had sold like the previous playstations then next gen we would have been looking forward to $900 consoles and $80 games and nothing but CODs, MG and other big games by only Ubisoft, Konami, Capcom and Activision.

I noticed that myself a little bit, many people having more then one PS2 and being a bedroom device and PS1 being the only one in the house and being a living room device and less reason to get everyone their own.  That and the fact that the PS1 slim didn't have the effect of PS2 slim which was many people went out and bought a PS2 slim that already owned a PS2 phat while PS1 slims went unsold at many places.

The other obvious point of last gens "growth" console units sold is there were three major companies with three very different consoles instead of just two which probably increased the number of total console sold since some people would own all three instead of both the previous gen.

I still sometime don't understand the comments concerning the Wii.
There's no denying adding the Wii mote and making games like Wii Fit or Wii Sports was indeed creative and going outside of the traditional venues.

However when the people that keep mentionning that creativity are the sames that keep asking for a new Zelda, a new Mario, a new Kirby, a new kid icarus I start to wonder.
Why are you asking for one more iterations of decade old franchises if you are really looking for something different that is creative ? That does not make a lot of sense....

Shoudn't you instead be asking for Nintendo to take risks and work on new IPs ?