50 million consoles sold and still going strong! The Wii is flying off the shelves in these financially difficult times, proving once and for all that Nintendo are back in the race. Could I even go so far as to say that the race is over and Nintendo are the out and out winners in this generation?

Would that be fair? After all, Microsoft and Sony are still manufacturing consoles, though in the case of the latter, it's more for the subsidised Blu-Ray player than for anything else. In terms of consoles sold, the Wii is by far the out and out winner, but as far as quality software is concerned, it's probably nowhere near the front.

With sales of Wii Play and Wii Fit still going through the roof, and titles like Mario Kart Wii and Super Mario Galaxy making big splashes in the charts, it's hard to criticise Nintendo themselves. We've had virtually every up-to-date franchise brought to the console in one form or another, and I can guarantee you that most people haven't managed even a 50% completion ratio on Zelda, Smash Bros. Brawl and Metroid Prime Corruption. Nintendo themselves have done quite a lot to push the console forward in terms of their own quality output.

Metroid, Zelda, Mario, Smash Bros. Brawl, Mario Kart... lovely Nintendo goodness on Wii.

The big problem is, the same cannot be said for third party developers. Sure, we can enjoy such excellent titles as HotD: Overkill, Elebits, Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition, Kororinpa, Boom Blox and Rayman Raving Rabbids. But the vast majority of the third party titles currently available are just poorly made pointless rehashes and dull yearly updates.

Good gravy, I hate party games! I mean, how often do I get to have a party these days? The next party on my anorexic social calendar is booked for May 2010. And the only reason I'm sure I'll have time for that is because it's my own wedding� Even so, I can hardly believe that Mrs Iun is going to be too happy with me playing the Wii on that particular day. Time to cut the cake? Sorry, love, I've just got to finish this pointless water-squirting mini game, I'll be right there.

Nintendo are partly to blame for this state of affairs, but only because their direction is so radically different to that of their rivals. No-one expected the Wii to be anything more than a six month gimmick, therefore no-one was ready when it blew apart the High Street with its money-printing capabilities.

So there was a scramble, a big scramble for everyone in the development community to get their thumb out of their collective backside and desperately throw out whatever they could for the console. And it's still happening. This situation is self-defeating in its approach: if you turn out a crappy piece of software in an attempt to make a quick buck on the back of the next big thing, you're dooming yourself to failure.

Picture this: Low-end mobile/flash game developer Fffflart inc, sees the Wii sales figures one day and says to itself "I want a piece of that, let's shift focus from our low revenue guaranteed income to something slightly riskier. But I don't want to spend any money and I don't want it to take longer than three months." What's the answer? Tommy Turtles Triple Whammy Party Special! A collection 100 of the most worthless mini games anyone has ever seen. It gets absolutely lambasted in the press, and the shops order about three copies in order to meet underwhelming consumer demand. The developer sits there scratching its head "What did I do wrong? Nothing! The games are fun, it must be Nintendo's fault! No one can make money on their consoles!" Tommy Turtle ends up touching cloth at the bottom end of the market, and the surprisingly surprised developer complains at the lack of support from the Big N.

Cheggers' Party Quiz... we're still having nightmares...

Thus, Fffflart inc. goes back to making its worthless columns clones for the iPhone and Nintendo gets the reputation of being hard to work with. Snap. In a way, developers can be forgiven for their reticence to adopt the Wii, what with the N64 using the awkward cartridge medium and the GameCube being less than popular last time round, no-one thought that the IR and motion-sensing gameplay would be anything more than a fly-by-night. Good for six months of sales, to be replaced by competitors with bigger and more powerful machines.

But now is not the time to go dishing the blame, if anything, Nintendo is really reaching out to developers using the DVD as a games medium, small but usable internal storage and a multitude of ways to play its games. Successful developers report that Nintendo are nothing less than helpful and reasonable when approached and the Wii is quite an easy machine to work on overall.

Right now we are staring down the right end of several new third-party titles that promise to deliver the goods, games which aren't just cheap party game cash-ins. Games such as The Conduit prove that if effort is made, the Wii can look, play and sell software just as well as any other machine on the market. So what's the excuse? Laziness, quite frankly. There are far too many companies out there churning out crap, simply to try and make a few pennies here and there.

Well guess what? The Partii is over guys, and you outstayed your welcome. Give us quality or give us nothing, it can only be good for your profits.

Iun Hockley
- N-Europe Staff Writer