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

[mEgAsHoT]

I agree with you totally Frankie....the Wii has seemed to hit a critical mass of absolute crap coming out for it. I can also vouch that the DS has suffered from the same shovelware plague...here is a brief history of my most recent Nintendo DS purchases:

July 2007: Sonic Rush
April 2007: Pokemon Pearl
August 2005 (received as a Birthday present): Advance Wars: Dual Strike

As you can see, I didn't buy any DS game in 2006, mainly because there were hardly any good titles out there that was worth plunking down 35 dollars on. Sure, there are a bunch of really great games on the DS (like Final Fantasy III, Mario Kart DS, etc.) but the crap far outnumbers the good stuff.

As for the Wii, they are definitely suffering from this same problem. I don't have a Wii, but as a longtime Nintendo fan (I have every main console except the NES) I am both appalled and sad that Nintendo's Wii console has so much shovelware. All of that potential for the Wii is just getting shoved right down the toilet with games like Ninjabread Man, Nitro Bike, Kidz Sports, stupid mini game complations, and half-baked ports of games like Tony Hawk's Proving Ground and NFS Pro Street. It's like developers don't even care anymore about the innovation of the console...they mearly want to exploit the innovation and the sheer popularlity of the console to make a lot of money off of it. Except for Nintendo, of course, who wants to deliver a quality product to make people want to buy the system for the excellent games. But everyone else is just lazy. Trust me when I say this, sooner or later the Wii is going to be sitting on store shelves because no one is buying it due to the overflow of crappy games. Either that's going to happen or the crappy games will probably be crushed and buried in the desert somewhere out in Arizona, like ET for the Atari 2600. :P

[Dangerboy]

Truth be told, I wouldn't call it critical mass, but more like there is finally a true, honest to god seperation of "good" and "shit" on a system.

But here's the catch; where is the shovelware being returned?

Ebay searches pull up few and far between. I have yet to see a copy of Wii Winter Sports in the wild outside of my store, where it was a used one traded in.

Obviously, there IS a market for them, or no one would release them. Bold Games may be using ergonomically correct stainless steel, carbon fiber shovels to push all their releases to market, but I can tell you right now that we had pre-orders on 4 different "crap" games, all picked up and bought.

Hell, we had a Sonic Riders Wii get traded in before any of the Bold Games were.

If anything, the Wii's budget titles are a huge bonus for those consumers, regardless of what/who they are, refuse to spend $50-$60 on a game - and its working really well.

Personally, I'm looking forward to Furu Furu Park ($20) and Bomberman Land ($20 - 30) as well as my CSI, Smash Brothers, and other 'higher ranked' games.

You can have a world where your Zeldas and your Excitetrucks can co-exist next to your Kidz Sports and Anubis IIs. Everyone gets somehting.

In other words, Nintendo, whether intentionally or unintentionally, cornered *another* market that no one else was really trying to cater too.

More power to them.

[ProgrammingAce]

Actually, a shocking number of Wii games are being returned to the distributor to be destroyed...

[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

[DigitalSpace]

Yes. I thought the Game Boy Color had the worst library of games for any Nintendo system, but the Wii is getting close to beating it.

Don't get me wrong, both the GBC and Wii have some exceptional games, but it seems like Nintendo has been too desperate for any third party support since the N64/GBC days, whether it be a watered down PS2 port with rushed and confusing Wiimote controls, or Imagine Ultimate Dogz Monster Trux Extreme.

Actually, a shocking number of Wii games are being returned to the distributor to be destroyed...

.___
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O RLY?

[MrSparkle]

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.

Yea i have to agree I'm a huge nes fan but 1 in every 10 games is worth going back and playing for more than 5 minutes at a time.

[Snapple]

Forgive me if this sounds like a less than intelligent response, but this is a total overreaction. It's like I said in the "Worst games of the Wii" thread. Every system has a ton of crap games. Every system, in fact, has more crap games than good games, without exception. Singling out the Wii is selective memory, and acting like you know it's downhill for the Wii from here on out is baseless. We haven't played any of these future games. If this topic was made a year ago, someone probably would've said something like "The Wii doesn't have anything as epic-looking as Lair coming out." And shocker of shockers, it turns out that we don't know what games are actually good until they come out. Lair was not, and a game with zero marketting behind it like Zack and Wiki ended up being a quality title.

As for Nintendo moving away from what the "Seal of Quality" stood for, that's a bunch of Grade A Crap. The Seal of Quality was NEVER kept off bad games just because they're bad. All the seal ever meant was that whoever made the game got a proper license from Nintendo. It has NOTHING TO DO WITH QUALITY. They put the seal on shitty games 20 years ago, and they put the seal on shitty games today. Nothing is different. Nothing.

[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.

[Icarus Moonsight]

Somebody, quick, call George Orwell! It's 1984 all over again! Oh noes!

This is more indicative of the casual/core gamer divide than anything else. Simple as that.

Though annoying, don't expect shovelware to single-handedly dry up the blue oceans. As long as you watch your step in the Wii aisle you'll be fine, those turds radiate a huge field of stink that any seasoned gamer worth their salt could (and should) sniff out and avoid. We all had to do it with past systems. So this shouldn't be anything new to anyone here.

Shovelware isn't all bad, really! Imagine Master Chef looks interesting at least.

Franky: That image was both distasteful and disturbing. Kudos

[Nesmaster]

Well.... there's DMC4, Burnout Paradise, Bionic Commando, Gran Turismo Prologue, Ninja Gaiden 2, Resident Evil 5, Lost Odyssey, GTA4, Rainbow 6: Vegas 2, Mercenaries 2, Alan Wake, Fable 2...

...Just Cause 2, Mafia II, Saints Row 2, LittleBigPlanet, MGS4, Splinter Cell Conviction, Prototype, and possibly APB off the top of my head. Sure, it could be argued that most of them are sequels, but I'd rather play a good sequel than a shitty new IP. Plus, 2008 = YEAR OF THE SANDBOX GAMES, BABY!!!

[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%.

[Icarus Moonsight]

It's the fun and unique games with substance that truly define a game system. No one wastes their time to remember the crap so those titles have little effect in retrospect. A console is remembered, mostly, for the good games and more so for it's gems. Unless crap is all the system has to offer. The Wii definitely has gems. The bad will more less be forgotten, just as it has with each system. See a pattern?

What is worse IMO are the highly hyped/anticipated games that flop. Red Steel, Perfect Dark Zero and Lair. I'm sure there are others. At least shovelware is more honest, they don't pretend to be good then all the sudden go bad once you buy em.

The core gamers taste and the catering thereof has been locked down for a while now, but they really have no idea what casuals want other than the traditional offerings ie: Sports games and racers. The industry is still experimenting with the dabblers and casuals to find out just what works and what doesn't. The experimentation has led to actual good game releases. Take Puzzle Quest for an example. A prime example of casual tinkering that ended up rather good.

[Chainsaw_Charlie]

For the DS there's

Phoenix Wright series
Zelda Phantom Hourglass
Touch Detective series
Hotel Dusk
Advance wars series
Lunar Knights
FF3
FF 12 offshoot

Wii(me personally)
Dragon quest Swords
Bully Scholarship edition
Zelda TP
Red Steel

[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?

[Jorpho]

I seem to be reading about a lot of optimism for Wii Fit.

Touch Detective series
Lunar Knights
Red Steel

Rather questionable choices there.

[Zing]

I don't really see a problem, yet.

I own every "worth buying" (to me, of course) game for the PS1 and PS2. I have 25 PS1 games and 18 PS2 games. These two systems have been out for 12 and 7 years, respectively. Both work out to approximately 2 "buy" games per year. I currently see 5-6 "buy" games available for the Wii. That's about right on target.

[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

[FantasiaWHT]

Looks like the lax standards of the Gameboy/Gameboy Color/Gameboy Advance have finally bled over to Nintendo's home console. I used to think that the GB and GBA had the worst crap:quality ratios, but I'm sure the Wii will dominate that field in due time, too.

Bummer.

But remember how much more successful Nintendo's handhelds have been in the past decade than its consoles. Maybe that formula is what it takes to make the home console a success too, hmm?

If the shovelware makes money, and convinces more people to buy the system (the parents especially, I'm thinking) that will make more other developers put more effort into the highest-quality games for that system, since they'll be likely to sell more to the larger installed user base.

[Rob2600]

I think crap comes with succes

Yes, exactly. To me, the amount of garbage games on the Wii is a good thing. It proves it is a huge success.

That doesn't mean I'm going to buy them.

Besides, not all budget priced games are bad. Mercury Meltdown Revolution, Smarty Pants, Link's Crossbow Training, My Word Coach, Resident Evil 4, and Ghost Squad are examples of $20 to $30 games that are polished and fun.

It's also important to consider a game's target audience. To us, average titles like SpongeBob SquarePants, Arctic Tale, or Showtime Championship Boxing are terrible, but to children, parents, and "casual" gamers, they're fine, especially for only $20 or $30 each. Remember several years ago, the PlayStation crowd gobbled up worthless budget games on a weekly basis. I witnessed it first-hand while working at a video game store and it was frustrating to me. We here at DP can't relate to many budget games, but the reality is most people don't care and are willing to buy mediocre $20 games.

Also coming soon are House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return, Nirtobike, and Endless Ocean for only $30 each! I rarely have to pay $50 for a new home video game anymore.