Retro was brought when? 2001 During the GC Era?
And Arika is freaking 3rd party: they make XBLA games too. Nintendo hasn't GROWN during the WII ERA.
Level 5 is 3rd party and they don't even have a WII game at the market? Sure they are talking about it but what's good is that when you can't even play it?
Level 5 is multiplaform, I have all thier games minus WKC? How does that change nintendo's growth? Nintendo's doesn't have much to do with them other publisher in other markets. Sony does the same thing with them. They are not part of nintendo team. Hense no growth.
Says the guy who somehow regurgitated Cing into this debate, who has always been a 3rd party developer, and their games on Nintendo platforms have never been hits, nothing like the Layton series, not even close. Seriously your argument is shallow at best, Nintendo has released or published more games for Wii then GC or N64, that is a fact.
The only legit company that was worth a crap anymore that Nintendo truly lost was LeftField and they bought out Nintendo's shares so they could be independent. There have no cutbacks or downsizing of their teams. Also as any business professional will attest to, buying companies with issues can invite cancer into your company if you are not careful. When you purchase a company you get their culture and baggage with it, so growing your business by purchasing every company you see out there that is struggling would make you a moronic business person. Nintendo is smart about their purchases (and sales as in Rare), unlike a company like EA who is screwing themselves big time with all developers they've sucked up.
Anyway back to the discussion, here is another significant developer, Next Level. While not a 2nd party it is once again far more important then Cing or Silikon Knights ever were in regards to game sales. We even have Skip who is a small but talented company who is crafting the art style games. But I guess you just manipulate your argument, before Cing was used, now that I debunked that with other examples it doesn't matter because they aren't "apart of Nintendo's team" (not even sure what the heck that is supposed to mean anyway). So freaken what? Nintendo has been publishing more games then they have on GC or N64, they don't need to buy development teams in order to grow, that is being done via publishing. Seriously, this is a sad argument and lacks a fundamental understanding of what "buying developers" truly means, growth through purchasing others is not always a good thing.