Do you think companies like Data Design, Destineer, Destination, Phoenix games, Majesco, 505 Games, Zoo Games, UFO, etc could have survived to the economic crisis or even to the HD development?

For once, I think that if the Wii hadnt existed, they would have needed to move to the DS, but the thing is this companies mostly produce cheap crappy games or simply port older games. Wii is allowing this companies to survive, based on old ports and horrid efforts. Im not saying all of this small companies are a disgrace, because its still great to see niche games make it to the Wii. My point is that without the Wii, none of these companies would have stood a chance.

I still fear for some of these companies, the day that PS2 dies, these multiplatform PS2 Wii games will see a dramatic decrease. Im talking about the niche games, not the crappy shovelware. The industry will have to adapt itself to these times. But I dont want the Wii to be remembered as the console that saved the crappy devs from falling, Nintendo should start setting some release rules, for example forbidding companies to release 5 year old rushed ports or games that are on the verge of being unplayable due to the horrid technical problems or the insane amount of bugs. Maybe a quality check should be done, because its unfair that developers who make an effort see their games sell on par or even less than this lame games, and then get discouraged by it and start making crappy games. Limiting the amount of games released by each company could also help, as it wont affect the main devs, but it will cut down the amount of crap released by these companies.

Nintendo you need to do something about this quickly.

I disagree. They are like a plauge. They will always be around. Nintendo is giving thema a major platform to work on this gen. Otherwise they'd be on the PC.

PS2 was full of shovelware btw.

Companies like this will always exist. I am pretty sure I remember Data Design from back in thee SNES days.

They are like roaches, they adapt and move forward.

@disolitude: Yes, they would have always found a way of surviving. But simply not on home consoles, HD costs would have been far too high for them and they woldnt have been able to port older games.

My guess is that they would have gone the DS route, PC is out of the question, their games would have never sold as good as on consoles.

Are these games even selling that well though?

I agree. Niche games are good but there's way too much utter crap on Wii.

Last time I saw such a huge degree of crap out for a system was the Atari 2600 and that killed not only that system but the entire industry ultimately.

Nintendo may be selling a kazillion 1st party games on Wii but they need to either stop allowing every single 3rd party game from being release regardless of quality or make their 'Seal of Quality' actually mean something. If they don't they risk owners getting frustrated by not being able to know a good game from a bad game (most people do not visit sites like IGN) and giving up altogether.

Barring lisensed games, I think it's hard to make a case that games that don't meet consumer demands are selling well. The only reason lisensed games are doing well(as always) is because the buyer is not usually the judge of the product, their child is.

@colonel: Well enough for them to keep on releasing tens of games every month. Most are quick ports, so there could never be a loss there.

At least these games were new games on the PS2 era, now they are simply old rushed and horrible ports on the Wii.

Remember Im talking about the shovelware companies, not the niche companies which I hope Wii can keep afloat.

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.