That's all well and good for Nintendo, but the third party publishers, if all clamouring for Wii support on launch, are risking doing exactly the same thing as they did on 360. Early adopters of the Wii are going to be interested in three things first and foremost - Super Mario Galaxy, WarioWare and Twilight Princess (in no particular order). If we get 10 or so third party offerings on launch that are again left on the shelf because everyone spent their money on Nintendo products, they're going to make the same kind of reaction. "Oh, Nintendo Wii is not commercially viable, bla".

Damn, third party publishers can be fickle sometimes.

I think that we will see little 3rd party development at all and that which will come along will be multiplatform. The days of exclusives are gone, to be replaced by the limited period exclusivity deals. So far so blah, but even when both the 360 and PS3 are released on the market and even if they both hit their aggressive sales figures both GTA4 and Halo3 are being released next year, potentially destroying xmas for everyone except MS and Take 2 (and its not like they don't have problems).

I'd be scared to take a risk on unproven hardware when I could develop cheaper games for the next year, flog it to the 100 million PS2 owners already out there and start working on 2008's release Winter schedule in Summer 2007.

"Early adopters of the Wii are going to be interested in three things first and foremost - Super Mario Galaxy, WarioWare and Twilight Princess (in no particular order)."

1. Super Mario Galaxy wasn't a launch title last I checked.
2. Sure, WarioWare is going to get a lot of interest, but given the style of gameplay, people WILL be looking for a second title to snap up alongside it.

I share the fear that we're going to see the launch line-up crammed with Wii-mote enable wii-hashes, but overall it's still positive. Publishers are going to need to sell far fewer units to break even on a title, and if they're successful with even a few games, it'll encourage them to keep at it with the system.

I really want Nintendo to turn their fortunes around this generation to stop the industry moving down this path of massively increasing prices for everything with little more than a graphical boost to show for it.

So now its bad news that Nintendo is getting all the attention from 3rd party developers. What kind of crap reporting is this. This is incredible news...even if the software is crap. Why??? Well because 6 months from now somebody will publish the number of titles available for wii, vs ps3, vs x360 and how many publishers are supporting each next gen system and at that point a shipping title is simply a shipping title and it will win over folks on the fence to purchase the system that has the most support (even if that is a dumb reason to purchase a console).

Okay so if 3rd parties ship 15 crap games for the wii...does it really matter. How many folks here will purchase a questionable game without game sites doing a review of it. I will be excited to see what the 3rd parties offer on launch day, but i would not even think of purchasing something not nintendo till i read a review of said software. Besides we will get the reviews before the system launches.

So if a majority of those titles are pure crap, lets say 2/3rds of the software (10/15) are pure crap, that means at least we get 5 great titles that no other system can likely support.

Either way its a win win.

By the way part of the reason why there was too much software on the shelves was because there where too few consoles to accompany them. Crap software will still sell, even on launch day, if enough gamers can get there hands on the hardware.

Also...if some software gets bargin binned quickly...thats good for gamers and publishers because it shows that consumers wont buy crap and hopefully they will learn to properly support a new gaming system.

Looks like one of us can't take objective reporting.

I believe SPOnG has always been on the side of 'platform awash with publishers = many a crap title', it's nothing to do with having a grudge against Nintendo, as you insinuated.

If you read the article at all actually, it was perhaps more of a commentary on the XBOX 360's launch period and the money gamble that publishers took by making games for a brand new, at the time non-existent audience. Now we hear they're all cutting back and looking towards Wii - a console due to launch in as little as two or three months time - there _should_ be significant worry that we'll get nothing but rush jobs.

You also have to make the publishers believe in whatever gimmick or feature your console has. That's why so many add-ons for consoles fail. Not enough support. And as SPOnG say, the first lot of DS titles from third parties were s**te. Now it's all well and good if it happens on a handheld where Nintendo has had a huge reputation in the market. Little risk. But the Wii is a home console, up against PS2 and 360. Even though it is smaller risk in terms of budget compared, I'd imagine the Wii would still be a significant risk to determine whether or not a publisher would support the console after making launch flops. Look at the Gamecube after all.

Crap third party titles are a way of life. Doesn't mean we can't moan about it though.