Companies playing "catch-up" on Wii's massive appeal

We love the fact that the Wii has exceeded all sales expectations (and every month that the Wii outsells the others, those otherguys have to do all the chores around here), but it isn't all strawberries and shortcake for Nintendo. Despite the great start, the lack of confidence some of the big players had regarding the Wii is manifesting into a horrendous drought of early third-party titles. EA in particular had to scramble to release decent titles (SSX Blur, Godfather) after the E3 2006 buzz and early sales success, and the lack of foresight has hurt their profit margin.

Indeed, not a single US publisher had a Wii game in the top 20 best-sellers in February, despite the obvious success of the console. EA plans to release six more games this year, but which of those won't be ported sports titles and movie franchises? Not that we don't want to cast spells with the Wiimote, because we do, but American third-party support will be weak until these flat-footed developers get with the times.

Check the Bloomberg article for some more detailed analysis and feel-good predictions about the Wii's future sales.

[Via GameDaily BIZ]