Vying for Wii Pie

Nintendo's Wii is a hit.

But more Wii consoles in the hands of consumers during the holiday season did not necessarily translate into gains for third-party publishers, many of which are scrambling to profit from the Wii's success.

The Wii sold more than 3.1 million units as of January, but the bestseller for the platform has been Nintendo's own title Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.

That compares with slightly more than 1 million PS3 units sold since its November launch, and Madden NFL 07 for the PS3, which brought in the big bucks for Electronic Arts(ERTS Quote).

"Nintendo has always dominated with games on their platform," says Brian O'Rourke, an analyst with the industry research firm In-Stat. "If you go back to all Nintendo platforms, two-thirds of software sales have been Nintendo-developed games, while with Microsoft(MSFT Quote) and Sony(SNE Quote), just a third comes from first-party games."

Still, winners on the Wii platform are likely to be THQ(THQI Quote) and Activision(ATVI Quote), say analysts, with Electronic Arts facing the greatest challenge, though EA is probably trying hardest to win.

Riding the Wii train won't be easy, says Billy Pidgeon, a games analyst at IDC. "There's this perception that Nintendo's systems are less friendly for third parties than competitive platforms," he says.

Three's a Crowd

This is what Pidgeon calls "Nintendo's third-party problem" -- a perception among game creators that Nintendo favors its internal development team over independent publishers.

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