Is the Wii reaching "critical mass" on crap shovelware?

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

We're over a year in, and it appears that the licensing and development process for Wii software is one that is neither long nor complicated.

Like any good system (and I do believe that the Wii is a very capable if only moderately powerful system) any title that spends an extensive amount of time and love in the development cycle can turn out very good to fantastic (ie. Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime, Zak and Wiki ... even 3rd party titles like Medal of Honor Heroes 2) but on the other side of the proverbial coin -

titles that zip through the process and wind up on store shelves with nary a press "preview" usually REEK of being shovelware, and most gamers can spot them a mile away.

What worries me, is that lately, I'm faced with a growing mass of what appears to be, cheap, quickly-produced, in some cases kids-product-licensed, near-alien-looking titles appearing on the Wii shelves on a weekly basis and there seems to be NO signs of slowing.

For the past year or so, I've not been able to find a decent DS title amidst the near hundreds of bits of shovelware garbage (sifting through it all is just headache-inducing) and I'm growing more and more concerned that within a year, the Wii will be very much of the same.

Do you think that the Wii is close to reaching it's "critical mass" level in garbage software (ie. a crap level of, say, 4 crap to 1 decent title) ?

Yes? No? Maybe? Never? If not now, soon?

Discuss.

I think yes, and I'm sad.

[diskoboy]

I think the Wii will peak with Smash Bros. Brawl.

After that, it's nothing but downhill from there.

I'm a bit sick and tired of seeing Mario, Link, Kirby, and the rest of the Nintendo brigade plastered on practically every damn game Nintendo puts out. And since NiGHTS was the last Wii game I knew with 100% certainty that I was looking forward to, I have a strong feeling that NiGHTS will be my final purchase on the Wii.

[Bojay1997]

Eventually, it will not be lucrative anymore for people to keep selling crap games for the Wii or DS. Consumers aren't morons and while they might take a risk on a $10 or $20 game once, after they get burned and realize it would have been better to spend $40 or $50 on something they will actually play for several weeks, they will leave all those games to sit in the front row of Best Buy. Retailers will respond by ordering fewer and fewer of these games and eventually, the handful of companies specializing in this type of junk will shut down. It's already starting to happen with the DS as fewer and fewer games are carried by the big retailers and it will start to happen with the Wii as more high quality first and third party titles are released and take up the space previously taken up by the garbage.

[Vectorman0]

This is what happened to Atari, then Nintendo came in with their seal of quality. Over 20 years later, it seems Nintendo has completely forgotten the standards on which their gaming empire was founded upon. We won't see another crash, but I doubt this surge of junk will go by without any ill effects on the industry, especially if it keeps up at this rate.

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

Oh, don't get me wrong, Vectorman0 I don't think it'll crash the industry, or even the Wii ... in fact, it seems to have done the exact opposite for the DS.

I've had a DS since day one, and I haven't been able to find more than two or three releases per year that are worth my time and money, and yet I'm constantly faced with the rhetoric from the general gaming public that it's got "much more fun-er-ur" games than just about anything on the market.

All I see is hundreds and hundreds of Brain-Age-a-likes, 16 bit style RPG's, Catz, Dogz, Horsez, Hamsterz, Babiez (I'm not even joking there) and licensed DS versions of just about every PG rated film that comes down the pike.

SIDE NOTE - With all the recent "Imagine" series (which are pretty much VERY sexist representations of what "young girls" should "enjoy" doing - Imagine Cooking, Imagine Fashion, Imagine Babiez) I was thinking that they should just combine them all into one title. It would be much more fun ...


The quantity sans quality-checking seems to sell with an exact OPPOSITE effect of the saturation of look-alike titles that crashed the market with Atari, Coleco etc. in the mid 80's ....

... so, no, I don't think it'll crash anything.

[Jorpho]

Oh, very droll, Mr. Frankie. I applaud.

Come to think of it, there's really not much left on the DS that I can think of that would be particularly desirable. But two or three releases a year is more than enough to keep me busy, considering the back catalogue I have yet to go through. (If only said back catalogue were a bit more accessible.)

[vegi-saurus]

The PS2 had a large library of crap too...no?

I won't be suprised that more crap will follow, but i'm confident there will be some good games to come as well.

[carlcarlson]

The PS2 had a large library of crap too...no?

Every system has a large library of crap, it's inevitable. The OP is just suggesting that the crap on the Wii outweighs the good to such a degree that it's going to kill the system (I think that's what he said).

I don't have a Wii, so I don't really know what games are out there for it. However, a week or two ago I got together with some of my old college friends, one one whom had gotten a Wii for Christmas. We decided to go to Family Video and rent a few games for it. Not only could we not find a FEW games that looked interesting, we couldn't find ANY. Not one. If I was to base my opinion purely on my one experience that I've had with the Wii, then I would say yes, the Wii has reached critical mass.

[MachineGex]

Here is why I think it hurt Atari much more than it will hurt Nintendo. Atari's market was flooded with crap and you never knew what you were getting. That really doesn't happen that much today(the not knowing part) because we have magazine reviews, internet reviews, message boards, fansites, rental places(online as well) etc. all flooded with good reviews usually before the game even comes out. Sure Nintendo has it's share of turds, but most people know which ones they are and not to grab them.

I can't remember the last time I bought a new game without reading at least one review. I am able to spend five minutes researching a game and pretty much know eactly what to expect and if I will like it. With Atari, I never knew what the game was going to end up like. It was really buying in the dark. Now, I don't have to gamble with my purchases. Every game I have paid full retail for, I have at least played it or read detailed reviews.

Bottom line: It isn't all that hard to figure out what games to avoid, so they aren't the land-mines they use to be 30 years ago.

[omnedon]

The NES had TONS of garbage. Tons! And it is considered a complete classic.


TONS.

And yes, the Wii is sporting a large amount of shovelware. Yuck.

[Gapporin]

Oh, very droll, Mr. Frankie. I applaud.

Those baby muffins will haunt me in my dreams.

[Teknik_SE-R]

All I see is hundreds and hundreds of Brain-Age-a-likes, 16 bit style RPG's, Catz, Dogz, Horsez, Hamsterz, Babiez (I'm not even joking there) and licensed DS versions of just about every PG rated film that comes down the pike.

SIDE NOTE - With all the recent "Imagine" series (which are pretty much VERY sexist representations of what "young girls" should "enjoy" doing - Imagine Cooking, Imagine Fashion, Imagine Babiez) I was thinking that they should just combine them all into one title. It would be much more fun ...


The quantity sans quality-checking seems to sell with an exact OPPOSITE effect of the saturation of look-alike titles that crashed the market with Atari, Coleco etc. in the mid 80's ....

... so, no, I don't think it'll crash anything.

HA HA HA HA HA! OMGMAO

I agree.

[Teknik_SE-R]

I check reviews before buying also. The thing about doing that is there is almost no chance of finding sleeper games, which I think are the gems of my collection. You end up with the same games that all your friends have.

AI don't think I'll ever learn my lesson either.I don't have enough money or time to waste searching for sleepers.My buddy bought Tron 2.0 on xbox (I never even knew it existed!) when it came out and I think it was a blast. My only complaint is that you can't do arena battles with AI. Its all online, and that's all but dissappeared after 4 or so years

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

I check reviews before buying also. The thing about doing that is there is almost no chance of finding sleeper games, which I think are the gems of my collection. You end up with the same games that all your friends have.

AI don't think I'll ever learn my lesson either.I don't have enough money or time to waste searching for sleepers.My buddy bought Tron 2.0 on xbox (I never even knew it existed!) when it came out and I think it was a blast. My only complaint is that you can't do arena battles with AI. Its all online, and that's all but dissappeared after 4 or so years

Alright!! I landed in somebody's quote section!!

I'll be sure not to take that graphic out of my Photobucket anytime soon.

[Willem]

I think crap comes with succes, the PS2 had/has that problem also. the amount of very good titles on the PS2 is what +-100? among the 1000+ titles. so that's only about 10%.

[roushimsx]

AI don't think I'll ever learn my lesson either.I don't have enough money or time to waste searching for sleepers.My buddy bought Tron 2.0 on xbox (I never even knew it existed!) when it came out and I think it was a blast. My only complaint is that you can't do arena battles with AI. Its all online, and that's all but dissappeared after 4 or so years

Way too many of Monolith's games tank at retail while being critical successes. I was happy as hell for them when FEAR became such a hit, because they sure as hell deserved one after all of the great games they've done over the years (NOLF 1 and 2, AVP2, Tron 2.0, etc).

My beef with the Xbox port of Tron 2.0 is the screen tearing problem, which is really prominent in the game. It's like they didn't bother enabling triple buffering or vsync to keep the framerate high....but in all honesty, I'd rather deal with a 1 frame input lag or maybe a touch of slowdown. I HATE screen tearing

[DeputyMoniker]

SIDE NOTE - With all the recent "Imagine" series (which are pretty much VERY sexist representations of what "young girls" should "enjoy" doing - Imagine Cooking, Imagine Fashion, Imagine Babiez) I was thinking that they should just combine them all into one title. It would be much more fun ...

When was the last time you saw a four or five year old girl? Most of them do like cooking, dressing, and playing with babies. It isn't sexist. It's reality. If you think it's a bad thing then let's just call it an epidemic. XD

Anyway, as far as the crapware goes, I don't own a Wii. I have been wondering though, what are these "casual gamers," God I'm sick of that term, playing? It seems to me that they're playing Wii Sports. Like that's selling the system and after that, people don't need anything else in the lineup. What are they playing?

[p_b]

Anyway, as far as the crapware goes, I don't own a Wii. I have been wondering though, what are these "casual gamers," God I'm sick of that term, playing? It seems to me that they're playing Wii Sports. Like that's selling the system and after that, people don't need anything else in the lineup. What are they playing?

If casual gamers on the DS are anything to go by (as I know a few of them but they don't have a Wii (yet)), they play stuff like Brain Training, New Super Mario Bros, even some Phoenix Wright and Hotel Dusk. And they listen to Dr Kawashima and return regularly
Apart from that, they play any crap they like, even if it makes me tear my hair out...

[PsychoCandy]

Most systems are loaded with horrible games. Atleast with the Wii we get a warning by looking at the price.

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

When was the last time you saw a four or five year old girl? Most of them do like cooking, dressing, and playing with babies. It isn't sexist. It's reality. If you think it's a bad thing then let's just call it an epidemic. XD

Anyway, as far as the crapware goes, I don't own a Wii. I have been wondering though, what are these "casual gamers," God I'm sick of that term, playing? It seems to me that they're playing Wii Sports. Like that's selling the system and after that, people don't need anything else in the lineup. What are they playing?

A.) Does that girl on the cover of that game look like a 4 or 5 year old? (I didn't photoshop her in there, she was a part of the retail box art.)

B.) Young children generally "enjoy" whatever they're "exposed to", especially if it comes loudly, colorfully, and with repetition. Psychologically speaking, during the developmental stages, if you only expose them (girls AND boys) to stereotypical matriarchal tasks, they'll mimic it/make games of it on their own without a video game giving them a scoring system/rewarding them for it. This only perpetuates the problem. And the choice by Ubisoft and others to exploit these things by only placing young teen girls on the box art and/or in the game as playable characters in a market that already has severe problems with skewing the entire marketing heavily to one sex (teenage boys), I think, can be called "sexist".

In our modern society, while there are certainly more freedoms for young boys and gilrs to make choices regarding what they want to play with than there were, say 50 years ago (the age old dichotomy of girls play with dolls vs. boys play with toy guns comes to mind) it's instances like this that remind me that there are still people in very influential positions pulling the strings and "marketing" to a gender-specific audience in a sexist fashion.

Is this the end of the world? No, not really...if this sort of thing doesn't happen in the video game world, it still happens all over the world of "children's entertainment" (largely in the form of toys being highly gender-specific) ... I just don't like to see it spill over into the game world, where we have enough things to worry about.

Interestingly enough, take a look at a DS game like Cooking Mama. (Which originates in it's development in Japan - a country that has a whole different set of "problems" with sexism.) While it could have in it's translation/porting easily been a game that skewed to being marketed towards young girls, it wound up nicely gender neutral in it's marketing, and in turn wound up being a much bigger success than any of those titles will critically, and I assume financially. (Nice job Majesco! You did NJ proud.)