There's also an excuse from every developer as to why their spin offs/low quality/low marketing games don't perform as well as other hardcore Wii games which have performed well (including many 3rd party ones).

Either it's the "different demographic" excuse, the "Wii owners only like Nintendo games" or some other ones... Nevermind the (in many cases) obvious differences in quality, marketing or brand name.

There are plenty of excuses from both sides. But of course, it's worse when the developers make excuses. They're the ones running a business, not we.

3rd Party attach rate is double. What's the cost of making the games?

These third party companies are getting their heads in a spin trying to figure out what the Wii demographic is. Forget the market-bloody-research and the expanded market blah blah blah. Make a good game like Resident Evil 5, just as you would on the HD consoles, if you can incorporate some good and appropriate motion or IR control all the better, make it as good as you can, don't skimp on the funding (it'll still be cheaper), advertise well and people will buy it. With a 65 million userbase only a small proportion of them need to buy it and your game will be a success.

I know I'm making it sound easier than it is but given the amount of 3rd parties that have even tried this approach you'd think it was actually impossible.

So going back to my original question: -

Where are the big AAA titles for the Wii that match up with Nintendo's offerings?

As a Wii owner, I'd like to know why the answer to this question is "there aren't any".

BTW, hsrob, your post illustrates another common excuse - "they need to advertise it more!". So, what you're saying is, dev costs are low, but then they need to spend millions on TV and magazine advertising in the hope that the fickle and unpredictable Wii crowd will buy their game, so in the end it'll cost them a fortune anyway. If it made business sense to spend a fortune on a AAA titles and/or spend a lot on a decent advertising campaign, WHY HAS NOBODY DONE IT??? The Wii is the best selling console this gen, so there has to be a reason why. Someone tell me that reason. It's all very well saying "they just need to do this and that", but nobody is saying why devs are avoiding doing those things.

Where are the big AAA titles for any console that match up with Nintendo's offerings?

I think you're asking the wrong question.

By the way, Dead Space: Extraction is already close to 200k WW sales, and quickly increasing.

http://www.vgchartz.com/swlaunch.php?game1=Dead%20Space%20Extraction%20-%20Wii[31932]

Microsoft has also bundled a lot of third party software whilst Nintendo and Sony have bundled a lot of first party software and theres another important difference right there.

There's loads of AAA titles on other systems that match up with Nintendo's offerings quality wise, even exceeding them. The big difference is that sales aren't stacked WAY in favour of those first party offerings on the other systems. If Zack & Wiki was made and released by Nintendo, but it was the exact same game as it already is, are you saying it wouldn't have sold more? Of course it would! That's part of the problem with the Wii audience. 360 owners don't say "this is Microsoft Game Studios so I'll buy it" and the bias towards first party games just isn't there like it is with the Wii. Some of that is down to the quality divide as not one Wii owner has been able to name any games that match up to Nintendo's first party offerings yet. I own a Wii so I know why that is - those games just don't exist, and again, nobody has been able to say why.

Wait, why did you suddenly change from a sales debate to a quality one?

We're talking about sales here. And don't start positing alternate universes where games were released by someone else, because there's no way we'll reach any conclusion from hypotheticals like those.

Do you have any proof that Wii owners buy games based on the publisher?

9 of the top 10 best selling Wii games are Nintendo games and the other game in the top 10 has the word "Mario" in the title. It doesn't take a genius to figure it out. Even if they are buying those games because they're better games, then that just leads  to the other point I've raised - where are the third party AAA titles for the Wii that match up in terms of quality with the Nintendo ones? Answer me that. If the average Wii owner is a discerning gamer that's buying games based on quality, why did only 1 in 238 buy Zack and Wiki? Whichever way you wanna slice it, it just doesn't look good.

Having the word Mario in the title doesn't mean they're made by Nintendo.

It's obvious that Nintendo's franchises have a high appeal. Indeed they have a higher appeal than any franchise on any platform (and this is based on historic data, not just the Wii era).

But 3rd party franchises with wide appeal have sold well on the Wii, which is why I'm puzzled as to why you think that it's the publisher name on the label that matters.