http://seanmalstrom.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/the-hostility-against-disruption/

 Some quotes:

"The “Game Industry” wants Nintendo to abandon its disruptive ways and return to the traditional core ways. While third parties say a Wii HD allows them to easily port over their game, this is also a lie. The “Game Industry” froze the Gamecube even though it had the same install base as the Xbox. Gamecube was deliberately left out.

And as this generation began, the “Game Industry” declared either further niche of Nintendo or its outright destruction as a console company. All analysts “agreed” that Nintendo would be last place. It is clear that the “Game Industry” wants Nintendo to be a game company, but not a console company. They want Nintendo to make Mario and Zelda and port it to all the systems." ...

 ...

..."Look at what happened to poor Sega. Sega competed with superior hardware and kept up with technological pace. What was the reaction? The reaction was that the “Game Industry” froze out Sega and did their best to destroy the company. The Saturn was quickly abandoned as companies jumped on Sony. The Dreamcast was entirely isolated by the “Game Industry”.

The “Game Industry” succeeded. Sega was destroyed.

Nintendo was increasingly isolated. Hilariously, the increase of Nintendo’s isolation was blamed on Nintendo. Many people believed this. No matter how far Nintendo would go with making development easier, with reaching out to third parties, with even allowing third parties to make games using their IPs, the console was consistently frozen. Remember that the Dreamcast, also, was easy to develop for. None of that mattered."

Sega fukd them selves over wth bad management. At their prime, they had more talent and balls than they had business sense.

Nintendo needs some of those Sega balls these days...they have been playing it completely safe for the last few years.

Otherwise, he is wrong as usual. Industry goes where the money is. Howmany 3rd party flops have there been on the wii? Not to mention that working with the Wii means working with yesterdays technology. People like to work with latest tech...

I can't really take it seriously. I love my Wii and my DS. I don't think that Sony or Microsoft would wake up and make such creative piece of hardware. Hardcore gamers will complain about nintendo because they are selfish, all they want to see on the market is the most powerful machine that has mature games. They simple can't live with the idea that some people play videogames for fun and not for graphics.

How many big mainline franchises from 3rd party developers have been developed for Wii?

Nintendo must have really done something to piss off those third parties when they were on top all those years ago.

Let's say as many as there have been on PS360.

Launching the wii wasn't a safe bet at all. Even the DS with the two screens was a real risk.

Like koffieboon wrote: Not many "main" 3rd party titles were on the wii.

Not many. the industry wasn't ready for a system with motion controls as a selling point and not gameplay, visuals, presentation, online...

The thing is, people don't realize that these top studios hire lots and lots of people. Animators, artists, network specialists, testers. These people need to work, and need to be paid. To make a Wii game, half of those people are not needed.

You can make a wii game for 5 million dollars lets say, and pray to sell a million copies. In the meantime you can fire half of the team and downsize as they are not needed.

Or you can make a game for HD twins, spend 15 million...paying the team you have with that money and have everyone working...and get a decent return on your investment in most cases.

So from a business perspective, I understand why Wii gets lot sof spin offs.

I don't know if that's true...

I think it's easier to flop on PS360 because of higher dev costs... but Wii has a lot more casual 3rd party titles that don't sell at all. I think Wii takes it in the end but mostly because there's a ton of people developing games for it that noone knows anything about.

OT: Does he define "Gaming Industry" because otherwise it's hard to understand what he's trying to say.

It's a vicious cycle, really - third parties don't put their mainline titles on Wii because they're afraid of them failing, so they put half-assed spin-offs instead, which end up failing, and then continue the same support because their previous endeavours failed.

However, MH3 did great on Wii, Guitar Hero does great, EA's sports games do great, RE4 did great, and so on. And both COD3 and 5, despite being "inferior ports," are both well beyond a million sales as well.

And next, we have Tales of Graces to look to, which will probably do well, as well as DQX whenever it comes out.