Nintendo Buzz Likely a Bust for Game Makers

Likewise, industry giant EA was "pleasantly surprised" by the reception the Wii received at E3, says John Schappert, general manager of the publisher's Canadian studio. Although the company had already been developing the next version of Madden NFL for the Wii, it has since added more titles to the mix and now expects to have four to six titles for the platform by the end of its fiscal year next March, company spokesman Jeff Brown says.

Mais Wii

Interest in the Wii from developers and publishers has increased in recent months, says Perrin Kaplan, vice president of marketing at Nintendo. Kaplan declined to say how many titles will be available for the Wii at launch or what percentage of them will be from developers other than Nintendo.

"We'll have a healthy dose of product at launch," she says, adding that the company showed off 27 games for the Wii at E3, many of them from third-party publishers.

Still, even if the publishers won't see immediate upside from the Wii, investors might be able to cash in this holiday season. American Depository Receipts of Nintendo, which is listed on the Tokyo stock exchange, trade on the pink sheets in the U.S. And then there are component manufacturers.

If the Wii takes off, small chipmaker MoSys (MOSY Quote) could see a surge in sales, because its memory chips will go in each Wii console sold.

And ATI Technologies (ATYT Quote) could be another play, because its graphics chips will be in the Wii and are already in the Xbox 360.

"Those are better ways to play it than the software publishers," says Joe Spiegel, a hedge fund manager at Dalek Capital, who is long MoSys' stock and short its puts. Spiegel's only long position among the publishers is Take-Two, where he is long the stock and short the puts.

In the long run, though, the publishers could benefit if the Wii is a success. Development for the platform is considerably cheaper than for the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360, industry sources say.

And then, of course, there's the price of the device. The more money consumers spend on hardware, the less they generally have to spend for games, say analysts.

"It's going to open a lot more room for spending on software," says Cole.