Well, taking the DS as an example, we've seen a lot of educational games and "utilities" released for it in Japan, while the US and Europe seem hesitant to release anything like that for it. I would probably buy them, because I find myself buying anything Nintendo puts on the market these days, but I don't see many other people following suit.
But then Nintendogs is a virtual pet, which has already proven to be a genre popular worldwide, while Otona DS Training is educational software, and has a very scuppered career in the west.
The Revolution may be able to help the DS and itself. We found out that it will be able to download and beam DS demos to your DS, so if they're not sure if something will sell, they can demo it and find out how popular it is. If they find some way of doing this with slightly off-the-wall Revolution games as well then we may be in for a treat.
But we really don't know what kind of gaming Nintendo has up its sleevies for the Revolution yet.