Theory: Wii is keeping shovelware and niche companies afloat.

[Onyxmeth]

Zucas said:

Onyxmeth said:

disolitude said:
There is even some shovelware on xbox 360. They just don't sell as well as the Wii ones.

Crash Time
that Alaska game
Secret Service
History Channel: Battle for the Pacific

I've said this before and I'll say it again. There should be quality standards set by the console makers that do not allow games with massive glitches to go to the market. I'm not talking about boring games, or poorly made ideas. I mean large frame rate drops, massive pop-in, largely subpar graphical efforts(outside of compilations of course) and game breaking bugs all rolled up into something picked up for $500,000 that used to be a C- school project from some kid in game design college.

 

 

In theory that sounds good but it would impose 3 problems.  One, variety would significantly go down which would actually hurt mainstream sales.  Second, a system flooded with nothing but quality is actually not good.  Part of the reason some of those higher quality games will sell is because they can market them as quality.  Without the lower side, then you expand the quality within that.  Meaning your average games now will become your bad games.  That just doesn't work well in marketing.  Finally, the system would work corruptly.  Companies and devs using it as a way to knock off competition by delaying there games to find a possible glitch or what not.  Just wouldn't work.

Every industry needs the good and the bad.  By doing that it has a line of separation between quality and of course in variety.  You need the great games like Zelda and MGS just like you need the bad games like Ninja Bread Man. 

If you want to solve the problem of games being released as a hoax, though, because they don't work, just educate the buyers.  Problem is with the buyers not the devs.

I'm not talking about a system filled with quality. I mean Nintendo implementing their Seal of Approval testing division from the NES era, and making sure games work. They can set a number of minimum standards that must be abided by or the game gets rejected and must be re-submitted when it is fixed. There are reports that some shovelware games break mid-game. There are reports that some of these games' save features are broken. Some of them slow to a 10 FPS crawl. I'm not talking about shit games that just suck to play. I mean setting standards so customers don't feel like they were given a half-finished product. Shovelware has it's place in the market, as long as it functions.

This goes for Sony and Microsoft too of course, but the problem stems mostly from successful platforms, and those belong to Nintendo.