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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[SaturnFan]

Yes. I see nothing worth owning in the near future, that's why my Wii is sold. After the Wii craziness is over and people are tired of Mario Galaxy/ect. , there be stockpiles of these at local gamestores for sale.

[Gapporin]

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

Those baby muffins will haunt me in my dreams.

[joshnickerson]

And I suppose a vast majority of PS3 and 360 titles coming out are top notch AAA titles, right?

[CartCollector]

What's interesting is that EGM had an article on this a few months back.

But my take is that more shovelware = more rares. Look at the VCS, NES, and Playstation. Popular consoles with loads of crap games. Also, more shovelware = more opportunities for a sleeper hit from an unknown developer. Again, look at those consoles.

[heybtbm]

And I suppose a vast majority of PS3 and 360 titles coming out are top notch AAA titles, right?

Actually the vast majority of AAA titles coming out this year are PS3 and 360 games, now that you mention it.

Anyway, before the Nintendo Mafia arrives and turns this thread into Wii vs. everything else, let me say that it's obvious Wii shovelware is getting out of hand. The shear amount of $20-$30 budget games that I've never heard of is astounding. I can understand a few games slipping past the internet radar, but has anyone checked out the Walmart budget bins lately? Where did these games come from?

[Vinnysdad]

And I suppose a vast majority of PS3 and 360 titles coming out are top notch AAA titles, right?

Maybe not but you have to admit that both the 360 and PS3 have a larger selection of good games to choose from compared to the Wii.

[swlovinist]

There is still good games on the Wii. The Wii will have more good games on it. Yes there is alot of crap. So does any mainstream system. Smash Melee and Mario Kart are coming out soon. I know that there are some haters of the system, but give it another year. For people who only like mature hardcore shooters and RPGs, this system is not for you. A family system it is, and that is fine with me.

[diskoboy]

And I suppose a vast majority of PS3 and 360 titles coming out are top notch AAA titles, right?

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, and the plethora of PSN and XBLA games, just off the top of my head.

The Wii has Smash Bros. Brawl, Crazy Climber (which probably won't get a US release), and No More Heroes coming up, and That's about it.

[roushimsx]

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.

[otaku]

I plan to rent, maybe buy nights for the wii soon and sometime in february will pick up smash bros which hopefully will keep me and my wii busy for awhile beyond that though all I can think of is that no more heroes (???) game

My bro still wants zelda (never cared for zelda) so that will keep the little machine busy as well.

[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