I mean they keep insisting a more powerful system would be better for them, but would that really mean they start scrambling to port all the big HD games to the Wii HD, AND give them a decent marketing campaign so they sell well compared to the sales on the 360/PS3?

Really, would they start throwing support to a Wii HD, or would they just find more reasons not to do it. "It's too late in the cycle." "We've already made the audience on the other systems." "Nintendo games will still get all the best sales."

In short, I really doubt it.

Well, let's look at history. GC was between the other two consoles in power, and that got loads of third party support, ...right?

Ports? Yeah, I think they'd happen. Hell, I think we'll see RE5 as a launch game for WiiHD, Wii Plus, Wii II or whatever.

Making a Wii HD would be the worst thing for the Wii. It would be no different from the other consoles. I like the Wii because it's exclusives differentiate it from the "casualized PC twins"

Publishers would want to, maybe. Just because publishers have a porting mentality. The question is whether the publishers/devs would think it would be worth their while bringing some of these games to a company that (in their mind) just doesn't have the audience for them.

It's a fun catch-22. Why should they invest in bringing the inevitable Assassin's Creed 3, for instance, to the Wii HD? The Wii audience (and thus, their perceptions of the Wii audience) isn't going to magically change if the Wii goes HD, so why should they make the investment to port these PS360 titles over when the audience still isn't there, and would rather just have Raving Rabbids HD Party instead?

It's really dependant on how similar a Wii HD is to the current HD twins. Similarity == ease of porting.

If a "Wii HD" had 256MB of system memory, and at least 128MB of graphics memory, or a unified memory architecture with 384MB or better, along with a 3 GHz Broadway, and ~400 MHz GPU, the Wii HD would likely see a truckload of HD crossplats.  The PS3 and Wii HD would see a lot of "motion controller twins" crossplats as well.

If a Wii HD didn't meet all of those specs, it'd still be difficult to port games to it. The system memory and CPU being approximately that of the HDs is the most important, since to reduce the amount of system memory you're using, and processing the main game loop requires, you usually have to change your game completely. The GPU speed and GPU memory don't have to keep up as well, since they are much easier to level-of-detail down the use of, without changing the game.

"It's a fun catch-22. Why should they invest in bringing the inevitable Assassin's Creed 3, for instance, to the Wii HD? The Wii audience (and thus, their perceptions of the Wii audience) isn't going to magically change if the Wii goes HD, so why should they make the investment to port these PS360 titles over when the audience still isn't there, and would rather just have Raving Rabbids HD Party instead?"

My point is that when Reggie has asked developers, they bring up the specs and how much work they have to do to make the game look good. So if this applies as well, then the specs talk is just another excuse.

No, they'd just fall back on the "we can't compete with Nintendo" excuse.

The GCN got little third-party support, why would a Wii HD?

No. Just no. They'd make up some bullcrap excuses.

I mean, it's a Nintendo comsole, after all.

Now guys that ain't entirely fair to 3rd parties. Yeah, the Wii's been getting shafted and yeah, the Gamecube's support wasn't fantastic (though it was still good enough in my book), but both of those had pretty legitimate reasons for going south, including the Gamecube just not being a very popular system. The Cube got plenty of ports, just not many exclusives - which is understandable! Why put exclusives on a console that topped out with 22-25 million players?

3rd party support was pretty great for the N64, on the other hand, even though the Playstation was curb-stomping it and Nintendo did everything in its power to make life Hell for third parties on that system.

I think they might, if the Wii2/WiiHD is as big as the Wii.