ultraslick said: It is a problem , its that simple, and that is sad because there is a lot of un-tapped potential for the wii. But as you sort of said, with the runaway success that the wii is, and the money dev's can make, why would they ever bother to tap that potential?

I think one of the biggest problems in not just the video game industry, but most industries in general, is that publishers play the numbers game too much.  Spend X on development, sell Y copies, make Z dollars.  And that's all they consider when deciding what kind of game to create or how much effort they're willing to spend on said game.

The truth is, there are good reasons to spend the additional effort.  Building a good reputation for a development studio or publisher is one.  Giving the developers a real sense of pride in their accomplishment is another.  Developers who really care about their games will work twice as hard on their next game.  Yet another good reason is userbase expansion.  If you can crank out a solid AAA title, you'll increase the appeal of the target platform.  More consoles will be sold, and your future games will reach a wider audience.

The problem is that publishers (and companies in general) always seem to be locked into the short-term mindset, and only want to bother analyzing things they can easily quantify.  It's difficult to predict how many more Wiis Nintendo would sell if 3rd parties were cranking out AAA titles, or how much interest there will be in Elebits 2 if you spend some more time working on Elebits 1.  But difficult or not, publishers ignore these factors at their own peril.

well,

shovelware decides the winner of the generation - that's what Nintendo learned, when they tried to be elitists with their "dream team" on the N64

To say it simply, i don't care about shovelware, and most people should just do the same...

Don't like a console? Don't buy it... don't like a game? Don't buy it...

Even if 60% or 70% of Wii games are crap, it doesn't make the system worse, or it doesn't give it a bad name... the other 30% are the most important thing, and usually, the AAA titles are only a 10% minority, and that's true with any console, even more the most successfull ones...

If Wii's got 10 to 20 AAA games each year, that's cool because i will never have time and money to buy more...

I have a personnal rule: two games a month, usually one new, and one secondhand, whether it's on GBA, DS, GC or Wii... plus some for my kids birthdays and christmas, of course, but these are usually DS games these days... so i'll buy MAX 12 new Wii games each year, only the best in the genres i like most... and in 2008, there's already a great choice comin', and that's all that matters...

See for yourself in that great BengaBenga thread:

http://vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=14526

And sorry, kingofwale, don't want to sound rude, but each time i see one of your post, i just get the same feeling out of it: you're not very positive, you usually don't have a good point, and in a more or less polite way, you're looking for problems and flames... you're not really trolling, but you're simply boring and uninteresting... no hard feelings, but after tens and tens and tens of your posts i've readed here, that's the way i see it, and i'm sure i'm not the only one...

And if you may call me a Nintendo fan or defender, i think i have the maturity and open-mind to talk with any gamer in a positive way, whatever his favourite console may be... as long as he's cool and open-minded as well... if you really want that much to talk about Wii everyday, you should buy one first, to say things politely...

tastyshovelware said: the truce comment was more for the earlier stuff. Yeah, personally I felt the ps2 was a solid console with plenty of noteworthy games. There were so many (in my opinion) that I could actually choose which great games not to get and still feel like I was getting the most out of my console. But it is a case by case basis. For the wii, I can live off 8-10 solid-great titles a year. Of course I want more then that for the sake of variety but I'm not too hard to please anymore. I'm currently busy with zack and wiki making me feel like an idiot every day (cause it's tough, not bad, haha). Hopefully it all works out and everyones console has a sh*t load of awesome stuff.

I was planning that i wouldn't comment this thread, but for the bolded part, it's nice that you and Smash Brother came to an understanding. In other words what SB was saying, is that despite PS2 games being 98% shovelware, it still had solid library of good games. And as what comes to things discussed in this thread in general, Wii has pretty similar start with PSX (although not THAT bad) with games, biggest difference being that Wii actually has some good games to go along with the shovelware. Yes, i'd like to see similar quality control like Nintendo had with NES, but that's just impossible these days. Atari crashed the US market by having no quality control, Nintendo brought the market back to its feet with quality control and Sony stole the market with having no control over quality. In todays market, it seems, that you need to have as little control as possible and a number of hyped games and established franchises, which needs to live up to expectations/hype in order to have success. This is partially because of high dev costs.

Do you know that PS2 had Ninja Bread man first?
& all Alvin on any platform sucks, not just Wii....

PS2 is the best shovelware machine, coz it has too many shovelware.........most of them , you don't even heard about it.........how can you review it? If we add all of that, it will be lower 60.........believe it!

Rath said: Yeah I agree, I think the Wii is the first ever console to get such a slew of shovelware.

 Close Sarcasm

As a pro-Nintendo guy, I do agree that it'd be nice if there was less shovel ware on the system. The question, though, is why did they ever drop their seal of approval?

I have a few thoughts:

1) When Nintendo was on top in the NES/SNES days, it got a reputation for being a bastard to work with, which is one reason so many third party publishers were so willing to jump over to Sony. It took years for Nintendo to repair their relations, and may be hesistant to push too hard.

2) Related to #1, coming in 2nd and 3rd in the last 2 generations simply robbed Nintendo of it's clout. It needed the third parties more than they needed it. Now that they are on top, it may give them the leverage to insist on more quality.

3) Lots of shit from third parties only makes Nintendo's games look that much better. So long as the competition is ass, there will be a market for Super Mario Tea Party.

4) The N64 had the rep of "quality over quantity." It got it's ass kicked by the PS1. The GameBoy and it's descendants have always overflowed with shovelware, and they have dominated like no other. Titles like Eternal Darkness, Beyond Good and Evil, and Psychonauts struggled to find an audience, while Transformers and Spider-Man 3 fly off shelves. It may be that Nintendo has finally realized that gamers may not be as discerning as they once believed.

XiaoMay said: Very poor exemple  For notice, Elebits is worth playing

Speaking as the chump who bought it and beat it, I could've done without it.

It wasn't a game so much as a concept for a game.

Some people like those low qualty games. My Wife buys games that are 3rd party $30-$40 games that only 30,000 world wide buys. She likes them just fine. She hates all the big name stuff (aside from Mario Party). All I'm trying to say is there are people who like those games. With more games to chose from, the Wii wins. It's a blessing, not a curse.

The OP has some valid points no doubt.

But at this time I find myself with plenty of games left to play with a great quality. Theres SSBB and Mario Kart coming also. I wont be out of quality games to play anytime soon thats for sure.

If the good games comes from Nintendo, or from 3rd parties, it doesn't matter to me. All I want is to play good games.

As Pikaboo said, there are lots of people playing and enjoying the games we, the posters on this forums, consider awful. I'm not one of them and sure as hell I don't have a good impression about this type of gamers, but they exist and there has to be games for them.

I don't understand why people care about all this crap games. Ok, for every 1 good game there are 100 crap ones, but why would you care about them ? Why ? Just play the games you enjoy and ignore the crap.

In every domain there is 1 good product and 100 crap ones around the good one trying to steal sales. I don't see why you expect the gaming to not follow the same pattern.