The Wii’s success initially caught the attention of many third-party companies looking to share in the benefits, but Sony believes that they’re losing interest in the system. Rob Dyer, senior vice president of public relations at SCEA, spoke out on just why that is.

“What publishers have said is they’re not going to spend the resources on Wii,” Dyer said. “In my job, we compete against Microsoft and Nintendo, and we’re competing for resources. So when I walk into a publisher, I ask, ‘Where are you guys pushing your resources?’ In the past, it was ‘Look how hot the Wii is,’ or ‘Look how hot the DS is,’ and ‘We should put resources there.’ They did that and realized, ‘You know what, third-party product just doesn’t sell on that platform.’”

Dyer also talked about how Sony specifically benefits from this situation.

“So now they’re taking those resources, coming back to us and saying, ‘Sony we’re going to be able to provide you with that exclusive content,’ or ‘We’re going to put more engineers on it and figure out to maximize the Blu-ray and get more out of PS3.’ That’s what we’re seeing now,” Dyer said.

“And I don’t even have to fight for their hearts and minds; I just show them the TRST (Toy Retail Sales Tracking) data with regards to how many top 10 titles are third-party titles on the Wii, or how many top 10 titles are third-party titles on the DS. Not many. It’s not a hard story to sell, and they get that,” Dyer stated. “Unless they’ve got a particular franchise that’s worked well on the Wii, you don’t see a lot of innovative new IP coming out on that platform.”

Not a lot of third-party support for the Wii? Why just in the next month the Wii is seeing third-party support in the way of Pony Friends 2, Hubert the Teddy Bear: Winter Games, and Pizza Delivery Boy. Although maybe that’s not the kind of third-party activity Sony is referencing.