According to the industry analysts at U.K.-based Screen Digest, Nintendo's success is reaping the rewards of great support from publishers, while conversely the struggles of the PS3 have led to much less support for Sony. Just looking at the all-important fourth quarter of the calendar year (the holiday shopping season) reveals the dramatic difference in publisher support for all three consoles.

86 titles are scheduled for release on the Wii in Q4, compared with 47 for Microsoft's Xbox 360 and just 38 for the PS3. Furthermore, a quarter of the Wii releases are exclusive to the platform, compared with eight for the Xbox 360 and five for PS3.

Screen Digest sees Nintendo's success and external support for Wii only accelerating, primarily thanks to the quickly growing installed base and lower cost of development on the platform. The firm "expects that the number of games available for Wii will surpass Xbox 360's library in early 2008 at current release rates."

"Armed with the most exclusives as well as the release of Super Mario Galaxy, Screen Digest believes that Wii is likely to lead the 256 bit market in the final quarter of 2007," the firm stated. "The Xbox 360 platform will be driven by an increasingly well established U.S. user base enjoying a combination of strong multiplatform releases and a persistent Halo 3. Given the competition, Sony's release schedule lacks the firepower to command consumer attention during this crucial trading quarter and it is difficult to see how the catalogue will drive hardware sales in such a competitive environment."

Ed Barton, Screen Digest Games Analyst commented, "Halo 3 commanded the attention of the mass market and we expect Super Mario Galaxy for Wii to continue the process of educating the consumer as to the benefits of the current generation of home consoles. Given present publishing activity levels and hardware sales rates, we expect 256 bit gaming to have moved out of transition and squarely into the mass adoption phase by year end. While Wii and Xbox 360 are likely to look back on 2007 with some satisfaction, the same cannot be said for PS3. Given the platform's release schedule this Christmas, it is not a surprise that Sony is focusing on lowering the cost of entry to PS3 platform to maintain parity with its rivals this Christmas."

On a side note, Screen Digest also stated that the Q4 release schedule "underlines the importance of the U.K. as a key territory for console games development, which leads the European territories and, given its size, is more than holding its own against the U.S. and Japan."