Vying for Wii Pie

THQ plans to have 11 Wii titles scheduled for release in 2008. "We are very bullish on the Wii and the DS and we think that our product lineup maps very well to both those platforms," says Brian Farrell, CEO of THQ. "I think you should think of the Wii as incrementally more positive to us than the PS3."

Meanwhile, analysts say that EA had been too optimistic about the success of PS3. For the PS3 launch in the third quarter, EA shipped four of its more popular games: Madden NFL, Need for Speed: Carbon, Fight Night Round 3 and Tiger Woods PGA Tour, but chose to bring only two of those to the Wii.

The Redwood City, Calif.-based market leader among video-game publishers is now trying to ramp up development on Nintendo systems.

The company has more than 15 SKUs (stock-keeping units) or game flavors in development for both the Wii and Nintendo DS handheld, including some original games, said Warren Jenson, chief financial officer of EA during the company's recent earnings call. Compare that with about 20 to 25 SKUs in fiscal 2008 for the PS3 and the Xbox 360.

EA plans to offer its immensely popular game line Sims, dubbed MySims for the Wii and DS, and another called SimCity for the DS. It is also bringing its much-talked-about Spore game to the DS.