Now many have read my latest post about a downfall in quality. Well I decided to create a different topic regarding the seal of quality itself.

Back in the eighties and early ninties their was something called the Nintendo Seal of Quality. Nintendo had very very very strict censorship policies. Publishers in most cases were aloud to publish about 3-games a year and those games were picked over with a fine toothed comb. Nintendo of course had a monopolistic advantage publishing many more of their own titles then they aloud the competition. Nintendo censored a couple games and made changes when they thought they were necessary.

Of course as we know those censorship policies weren't exactly legal. Nintendo ended up having to give them up toward the beggining of the Nintendo64. During the late N64 and GameCube era Nintendo still felt they were the super power and maintained quality testing. Nintendo didn't liscense games like Bubsy3D now I admit some games got slipped through their hands but for the most part Nintendo maintained a standard of quality.

Today Nintendo has abolished the seal of quality. It know longer exists instead we have a simple Nintendo Seal whichmeans the software or hardware was liscensed by Nintendo. As we have seen with the Wii this means that all kinds of junk can be released and as much of it as publishers can push out. Nintendo does still have a process of liscensing but now they liscense games sometimes before even working demo's are availible. 

So should Nintendo have a quality standard and stick to it? Should Nintendo create a new testing team to ensure that a higher next generation standard of quality is met? Or should Nintendo maintain the free for all mentality of the Official Nintendo Seal.

What do you think, the "Seal of Quality" or the "Official Seal"?

Well if they want a better chance of winning this generation with the largest share of the market, then they should stick with the Official Seal.
If they want a better chance that they will have the highest percentage of quality games, then they should go back to the Seal of Quality.

Well i guess they learnt from n64 vs ps1 and gc vs ps2 that having the best exclusive games of a generation is no match for having a shit load of games on their system. In the end it is better, let all games be released (within reason) and let the customer decides. If people hate these crappy games and dont buy them, then companies will stop making them.

Nintendo should only use the "seal of quality" on their own first party games. It's amazing that both those seals have been around since the NES days.

It was five games per year. This was supposed to make sure that the quality is high.
I would take the Seal of quality, but since it's not smart business anymore, unlike right after the US gaming market crash in the 80's, i'd have to go with Official seal.

I actually think they should use a two seal system.

Games that pass the Official quality test get the "Official Nintendo Seal of Quality", while games that don't only get the "Official Nintendo Seal". If implemented properly this could drive developers to work harder to get that "optional" better seal. This would reduce the sheer number of crap, but not prevent anyone from making a crappy game if they so desire. Also, it would let consumers know which games have been quality tested by nintendo.

^^^^ Was considering that very same option. Make it as a reward system. When companies make a game, they send a copy into nintendo and nintendo can reward them with an official seal of quality if they've done well with the controls and everything else.

I think your right, Nintendo shouldn't have no quality censoring at the same time they shouldn't prevent developers from developing games freely.

Maybe Nintendo could do a little more to support the seal. Maybe grant the developers with more seals dibs on new dev kits etc..etc.. a type of reward system! Rather then not liscensing bad games they could reward good games and publishers who develope higher quality software!

Kaplan talks about it here! 

This high level of Nintendo quality sounds really good, if you don't pass you don't get the seal, but your game can still come out. It would work wonders, weed out the crappy games.

I hate to tell you, but even with the Nintendo Seal of Quality, there was A LOT of bullshit being released. Not as much with the SNES, but the Gameboy and the NES were shit magnets! Seal or no, I think Nintendo does need to step in and make sure that developers are making some effort to release quality titles on their systems.