@Laoldar, The three games that everyone talks about are Super Mario Galaxy, Smash Bros, and Mario Kart Wii. Before Metroid Prime came out, there was arguably only one major, first party game out: Twilight Princess. While Mario is the juggernaut character of Nintendo, not all games that feature Mario are major first party releases. I'm defining "major, first party game" as something a consumer would buy a system to play, which I don't think anyone would do for anything that is not an installment of Super Mario Bros, Zelda, Metroid, or Smash Brothers. I don't think the other games that you mentioned would sell systems in and of themselves. That's not to say that they're not a proverbial icing on the cake; they're just not the cake itself.
As for the PS3. I'm talking about games like Gran Tourismo, GTA 4, Metal Gear Solid 4, etc. Brand-name, established, Sony specific games. Just because you rattle off a list of first party Sony games doesn't mean that casual gamers saying that either system doesn't have the games they want isn't true. You and I both know that there are good games to play on both systems, but people who are going to buy a PS3 for GTA, or a Wii for Super Mario Galaxy, aren't going to buy those systems until their games are out.
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The three games that everyone talks about are Super Mario Galaxy, Smash Bros, and Mario Kart Wii. Before Metroid Prime came out, there was arguably only one major, first party game out: Twilight Princess. While Mario is the juggernaut character of Nintendo, not all games that feature Mario are major first party releases. I'm defining "major, first party game" as something a consumer would buy a system to play, which I don't think anyone would do for anything that is not an installment of Super Mario Bros, Zelda, Metroid, or Smash Brothers. I don't think the other games that you mentioned would sell systems in and of themselves. That's not to say that they're not a proverbial icing on the cake; they're just not the cake itself.
As for the PS3. I'm talking about games like Gran Tourismo, GTA 4, Metal Gear Solid 4, etc. Brand-name, established, Sony specific games. Just because you rattle off a list of first party Sony games doesn't mean that casual gamers saying that either system doesn't have the games they want isn't true. You and I both know that there are good games to play on both systems, but people who are going to buy a PS3 for GTA, or a Wii for Super Mario Galaxy, aren't going to buy those systems until their games are out.