| Mifely said: The Wii will have some decent 3rd party engines after a while, but they'll never be truly spectacular in the graphics sense. They won't suck as bad as most of the shovelware does though. Nintendo has consistantly set the high bar for their games with their 1st party titles. There really aren't engines that ever outdo them on their platforms, ever. Some come close now and then (RE4 on the GC, for example), but Nintendo will always be king. You can't ever expect more out of the Wii than Nintendo provides. Their games are fun to look at, but not astonishing in the graphics department. I would argue that "fun to look at" is what really matters to the typical Wii user, and Nintendo knows that. Some of the shovelware... heck a lot of it, appeals just fine to kids. Thus, it sells, and the older gamer sees it as shovelware. The % of shovelware will always be much higher though, due to the nature of the beast. People *do* buy the shovelware... and that's exactly what keeps it goin. The Wii will never see the likes of games like MGS4, GTA4, etc... FF XIII, and so on will just never go back after hitting the high end on the PS3/360. If the Wii has any breakout awesome titles, they pretty much have to be new IPs, where there's no "step backward" to be taken. Even then, the Wii is limited -- much smaller memory than its competitors, weaker CPU/GPU... it just doesn't compare. Compare it to a PC of even greater potential... say a 1.4 GHz P3, or even a superior Athlon, with 128 MB of memory and a 32 MB graphics card... all supposedly faster/bigger than the Wii, even after considering the superior architecture of the Wii's components/bus/memory/etc. How long has it been since you owned a PC of those (superior to Wii) specs? |
The shovelware is actually not really selling. It's rare for that crap to sell higher than 50,000 or 100,000 in some cases. The single best selling shovelware title is Carnival Games because it was heavily advertised.
Soul Calibur Legends was shovelware, and it only managed about 110,000 since it's launch last year.
Pet Horsez 2, only 90,000.
My Horse and Me: 60,000.
Jenga: 30,000.
Ninjabread Man: 30,000 (this is about the best selling game from Conspiracy).
Bug Island: 30,000.
Alvin and the Chipmunks: 30,000.
Counter Force, Billy the Wizard, Diego: 20,000 each.
Balloon Pop, Ultimate Board Game Collection, Pimp My Ride, Pool Party, Jumper--all around only 10,000.
Don't assume that just because there is shovelware that people are buying it. That's barely true. Both Resident Evil titles passed the million mark, after all--and these had no televised ad campaigns. Metroid Prime 3 also cracked a million. Very few people are buying the shovelware crap, and the companies are going to start realizing this. None of Ubi-Soft's Petz shovelware titles have sold as much as Red Steel, Rayman Rabbids 1 or 2, or No More Heroes. And these Petz titles get televised advertisements--and they still haven't outsold (individually) No More Heroes which Ubisoft barely promoted at all. Hell, the Prince of Persia port they dropped onto the Wii has sold about as much as Petz Dogs and Petz Cats--and those are the only two of those titles with about 200,000 in sales each.
High School Musical and Midway's Game Party are two other exceptions of shovelware that managed to sell well. But then, those Disney fans will buy any piece of crap with Diz-Nee slathered across it. For the most part, though, shovelware performs dismally on the Wii. Just as they should.
