Wii Sports, Wii Sports Resort, Wii Fit, Mario Kart Wii, New Super Mario Bros Wii-- Games that outsell anything on any other system and what does Nintendo do? nothing. Nintendo has been pissing in the wind for the last 2 years.
But they Can. Most companies would love to be where Nintendo is but it makes a company that is in Nintendo's position a little less hungry.
Agreed. Nintendo has quite clearly demonstrated that they don't care about their customers and would rather piss in the wind than actually make the games that people want. That's what the WiiU is all about--pleasing developers so they can just shovel ports rather than actually put some effort into making awesome games for a Nintendo console. There's a reason that xbox or ps3 don't have any 20 or 30 million+ selling titles on their console--because devs won't or can't make games that have mass market appeal.
Ports are better than nothing. Developers aren't willing to take chances outside the download arena, and Nintendo can't change that. What they can do is ensure that the third parties give the Wii U the same support as the other consoles. Then the decision is which platform has the best first-party lineup, and Nintendo's in pretty good shape in that scenario.
Nintendo isn't in good shape--it's last big seller came out 2 years ago. XBox and PS owners aren't going to migrate to the WiiU just because it has the same games as the machines they ALREADY own. Nintendo has already proven, with the last 2 years of the Wii, that they aren't interested in keeping their costumers. So who is going to buy the WiiU?
Nintendo is in fine shape in terms of first party support compared to the other two companies, it's just that because they don't have big third party releases to space things out, we have great years like last year followed by dead years like this one. I'm not sure what you think came out in 2009 that was the big seller, but Nintendo has plenty of huge sellers, in addition to the decently selling games from last year like Kirby or DK, it's just that Nintendo's huge sellers appeal to a different kind of casual crowd than the other consoles.
That's why this whole idea of "casuals" is so dumb, there have always been casual gamers, it's just that until probably the DS, the casual players were "hardcore" kids or bro-y dudes who would only play the most popular multiplayer games. Honestly, I would much prefer bringing in intelligent, if ignorant, adults, and a new generation of kids as casual gamers than those previously mentioned as long as I keep getting enough games to keep me satisfied. And right now, with as much back log as there is for both DS and Wii, I have more than enough games to play. Way more than enough, I have more games to play than I have the time and money to play. I know that a lot of people consume games faster than me, and it sucks that there are dry spells like this, but honestly, there is far too much whining on the internet for this. I don't understand how people are so "starved for games." I look at Ocarina of Time 3D and say, wow, I'd really like to play that, but you know, I still have Monster Tale to finish, and Galaxy 2, and countless other games, I would be wasting my money. Not to mention that most people complaining about the Wii's drought also own other systems. I'm not apologizing for Nintendo, they could do a better job, but there is no way people complaining actually have no games to play.
Also, I don't think the idea with the ports is to get people to buy games twice. You have to start somewhere and ports are a quick, cheap, and easy way for devs to get familiar with the system and to sell a game they already made to some new people. And as someone who doesn't own another console, I'll be buying those games for WiiU.