A Solution To Why Shovelware Outsells Core

Has anyone ever gone to the local Target or maybe Walmart and looked in the Wii section at games? You have probably seen your share of shovelware engulfing the lone core titles on the system, but have you ever really looked hard? People have been complaining that the Wii cant sell core titles and although in my opinion they are wrong it is hard for me to counter that argument until today.

You will see an occasional Madworld, House of the Dead: Overkill or Call of Duty but for the most part the shelves are filled with The Sims, Hannah and Carnival Games. If you look at the shelves at Target, at least in my area, you will see that most are actual shovelware games or casual games but the disturbing part is that most of these games are actually stealing could be sales from core games on the system. You ask how? I’ll tell you.

You may have noticed that Carnival Games for example has sold over 3 million copies and has been deemed a huge success , now that might be a large amount of copies but not really when you think that the game has been out for 83 weeks. The problem is not that core games are not selling it is that core games are not the ones that are being left on the shelves for 2 years.

Metroid Prime 3 has sold over 1.5 million copies worldwide and came out the same month as Carnival Games now why is Metroid Prime 3 not still on the shelves?

Lets recap this situation, Metroid sold over 200,000 copies in its first week in America, while Carnival games sold only 30,000. As of today though Carnival Games has sold twice as much as Metroid not due to crazy sales but just that Carnival games has been on the shelves for that much longer that Metroid.

This is the case for a lot of core games such as No More Heroes or Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, which are both very hard to find outside of Gamestop. Yet for some reason you still have Cooking Mama selling copies even at 106 weeks old, Monster 4x4 at 123, and Rayman Raving Rabbids at 123.

If you look at Wii sales every week you will notice a trend in the top 20. The top 20 Wii games are usually all good titles, although 2-4 casual games will slip in there. Now if you look outside of the top 20 Wii charts it gets scary and quick, you will see shovelware galore ranging from release dates 6 months ago to 3 years ago, many of whom are still on store shelves at major retailers.

So while games like De Blob, Okami and Zack and Wiki are being taken off store shelves the shovelware continues regardless of how little they are actually selling.

This brings me to my question, what ever happened to rotation in the game aisle? More importantly can companies in the video game industry do something about this? The solution may come to be even if by just separating the shovelware games from the core games.

What could help possibly fix this problem?

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that picture is exactly like what you see on the shelfs in the uk. some good games in there but most are the parlour type games.