The Wii has many, many crummy games

[LordTheNightKnight]

Words Of Wisdom said:

HappySqurriel said:

The N64 also had a far better ratio of good games to bad games than the Playstation did ...

Shovelware ends up making up most of the library of consoles that sell a lot of hardware because its entire strategy for existing is dependant on a numbers game; a small percentage of consumers will walk into a videogame store with the intention of buying a game and no paritcular game in mind (they could just be buying a gift), they will see the name "Ninjabread Man" with its awsome boxart and think that it is a good game, see its low price and buy it. A console which has sold twice as many pieces of hardware has twice the population of uninformed consumers who will (potentially) buy your game.

The problem is that this has the effect of making consumers unhappy with their purchases or, even worse, giving uneducated consumers the opinion that ALL Wii games are shovelware.

You got it backwards. Those "uneducated consumers" don't even know what shovelware is (as the uneducated part should tell you). It's the hardcore gamers that know shovelware, but they ALSO know to stay away from it. I have about 30 PS2 games, and about 20 GC games, all quality titles, or at least titles that appealed to me.

The system I most remember for shovelware is the Gameboy Color, followed by the GBA. And selling 50 million systems in three years, and 75 million in 5, shows that all that shovelware didn't turn the fans from the systems. They bought the games they liked.