hardcore gamers buy online thats why.

ever wonder why PC games are no longer on shelves

Shelf space... it'll be nice once the entire world switches to digital and we all just download games, then we don't have to worry about this.

Did you ever wonder why the shelves in your grocery store look the way that they do?  The big brand names are always around eye level, and the lesser know stuff is high on the shelf or low on the shelf.  So products get a lot of shelf space, while other get very little.  Things that appeal to kids are always low so they can grab them.

Do you think this stuff happens by chance? NO!  The distributors of these products actually pay for shelf space.  Maybe it is time that video game publishers developed a similar model.

1. core=/=hardcore, use these terms correctly


2. Core games are supposed to be outsold. This is why they are called "core". Not made for the whole audience, just for the fans, the most demanding consumers, the tip of the iceberg.
If you want to fix this "problem", you must also fix the rules of logic.


3. stores order games based on demand. If no one buys a game, they cut the price of the remaining, unsellable game, sell it for pennies, and don't order more. If they sell out a hardcore game in two days, they will order more, and more, until it stops selling.
Hardcore games sell only for a few weeks after release, because "teh hardcoreh forum warriorz" won't find it fresh after a few weeks.
The Expanded Audience buys less fresh games, because they don't buy them with the intention of buying "the most critically acclaimed game of This Month", they buy whatever is fun for them.


4. Shovelware is a stupid term, what does it refer to anyways?
-Quality is subjective, based on preference, so if it means "low quality", Assassins Creed was "shovelware for me".
-If it refers to development costs, World of Goo is shovelware, too.

Basicaly your saying shovelware is perofrming well because of the arrangement of the games , you then compare it to last gen . Couldn't it be that consumer tastes have changed and that the retail sector is responding to this change ? the Wii expands the demographic the PS2 held and with that comes change , consumer criteria has changed.

Stop attributing shovelware's good performance to shelf space and start recognising it's what the consumer may want.

Here's my defination:

Shovelware - Games of such intentional low quality they are barely playable but highly profitable even when sales are only in the thousands, often reskins of other otherwise identical games, and made for no other reason than to rip off money from the retailers (and consumers if they are stupid enough to buy).

All Data Design games fall into this catagory as do Balls of Fury, most UFO games, Alone in the Dark amongst others. These crapfests make Carnival Games look like a triple A game in comparison.

I guess it depends on how you define shovelware.

Is shovelware a game with high production values but turns out to be a piece of crap to play.

or a game made with no concern for it's quality and turns out to be a piece of crap to play.

Cause and effect.

Games get pulled from the shelves because they aren't selling well anymore. That's the first step.

Of course from there, it spirals. Less shelf space means less sales, means less shelf space, means less sales. But if something just plain sells well, it will get reordered.

And of course, publishers or distributors can buy shelf space, but once again, they aren't going to buy shelf space unless they expect the units will move.

To some extent, you can create self-fulfilling prophesies, sure. But once you're past the launch, and talking in huge volumes like 1.5m and 3m, the difference in sales is going to come from the utility of the product more than anything.

Personally, I don't consider a game like Red Steel or Haze shovelware, just bad games.

Was the OP a joke? The games stay in the shelf as long as people keep buying it. Twilight Princess is a launch game and still in the shelves, because its sales maintain a level where it's worth to keep it in shelves. Once a game stops selling, it gets phased out through bargain bin.
The shelf time is determined by how well a game sells, a different matter then again is, if the game isn't widely taken into shelves by retailers at all (NMH and Disaster got the treatment around here).

@JRPG: You know, your logic is kind of twisted. You're claiming that PS2 got good games because it could handle similar games with GC and Xbox -> otherwise the games had stayed as GC and Xbox exclusives.
In reality, GC and Xbox got ports/multiplatform games from PS2 because they could handle the games, making cheap ports possible. The market decided PS2 was the one leading the market and that's where the publishers have little to say. They are forced to go to the platform that makes them most money and earn some extra with cheap ports (in this gen, porting Wii games to PS360 isn't that cheap as PS2 -> GC/Xbox).