My fear going into this generation was that all three platforms would go the HD route, they would all offer systems at price tags above $300, that all major (and some minor) developers would commit themselves to manufacturing these huge budget titles, and... the sales would look like this, except WITHOUT the Wii. Basically I worried that the entire industry would overestimate consumer's willingness to buy in, precipitating a major crisis among publishers who would find little ground to support the second and third generation of extremely expensive games.
The game industry has developed more and more into a boom-and-bust economy, or to put it another way a blockbuster economy. What if, because of a botched generation shift, everyone goes bust at once? It's good to have a safety net, one company that's moving a different direction while the other two move down the path expected by conventional wisdom. Because if conventional wisdom proves wrong all this specialized industry of developers and publishers has something profitable to fall back on. On top of that, the Wii doctrine itself argues against having a company's bottom line so perilously dependent on the success of high-budget franchises, and that's a good thing no matter what your preference in games is.
This doesn't mean the end of HD gaming, or the progress of cinematic game presentation. It's a crisis averted, and success on the Wii will eventually fuel future HD projects (though that may take a full generation to really ramp up).