Maybe we can do an analysis on the titles themselves. I don't think it's simply "third parties can sell on the Wii", I mean, if there's any justice towards that statement, many quality titles would be million sellers by now (that currently aren't, and will probably never be).

Great work :p

Go and see the list of million sellers for wii for yourself, and apart from some of the nintendo publishes games most of it is garbage, there is a lot of garbage also on the 360 and ps3 list, but not to the extent that its present on the wii list

Going from that list, what 3party developers think sells on wii are, gim simulators , minigame compilations and music games, (apart from the nintendo published games )so thats what they are trowing at the wii at the moment. But that is already starting to fail, the market is so crowded on the genres that nothing that launched on the last months is selling well. ( infact the only games selling at the moment on wii are the usual 5 franchises that have been selling for years now )

So if i were a 3party publisher right now the only thing different i would do was release a game similar in concept with mario, a platformer and see if that could catch a bit of the mario craze and the fact that practically nothing similar to mario exists on the wii at the moment and that is something that has intrigued me ever since the wii became a massive hit why didn't anyone tried to revitalize platformers, sonic doesn't count, its more of a racing game then a platformer

To test out the theory as to whether successful third-party Wii games are mostly shovelware, here are metascore ratings for the 1+ million selling third-party games on the Wii.

Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition 91
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock 86
Guitar Hero: World Tour 86
Call of Duty: World At War 83
Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 83
EA Sports Active 81
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 All-Play 81
LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga 80
Rock Band 80
Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip 78
Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures 78
Rayman Raving Rabbids 76
Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles 75
Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz 74
Lego Batman: The Videogame 74
Rayman Raving Rabbids: TV Party 73
Guitar Hero: Aerosmith 73
Dance Dance Revolution: Hottest Party 73
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 72
My Fitness Coach 71
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 71
Sonic and the Secret Rings 69
Active Life: Outdoor Challenge 69
Call of Duty 3 69
MySims 68
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games (published by Sega) 67
Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 67
We Ski 67
Sonic Unleashed 66
The House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return 66
Smarty Pants 65
High School Musical: Sing It! 64
Hannah Montana: Spotlight World Tour 64
Red Steel 63
Ben 10: Protector of Earth 63
Cooking Mama: Cook Off 61
Carnival Games 56
Deca Sports 50
Big Beach Sports 44
Game Party 2 29
Game Party 25

Median (middle distribution) score for 1 million+ third-party game: 71

Keep in mind though that game reviewers tend to be really arrogant and full of themselves when it comes to reviewing Wii games. They have a tendency to look down on Wii games because they aren't "core" enough for them. I do think 360 and PS3 have better third-party lineups but the Wii third-party games get downgraded because lots of reviewers think that they are too manly or 'core' to enjoy a 'casual' game. I don't mind 'casual' games so as long as they are fun and remain fun.

So, 9 are great (1 is excellent), 12 are decent/solid games, 9 are mediocre, and 6 are passable/poor, and 5 just suck.

So, 21 games are worth buying; 15 are just rentals, and 5 are just budget junk. The ratio is 21/41 (Good/bad) Only 5-8 really count as shovelware(12-20%)