he was discussing the fact that third party titles are being drowned by shovelwave...

That is exactly what I was discussing too.

When you look at the Wii third party software ( roughly 110 millions units of software/year) and you see no single title has ever managed to get 2% of the sales you know there is a problem.

I don't think there has ever been a market so fragmented. Even if there aren't crazy good titles, you would expect some mediocre title to come out on top and grab a significant share...

Take any market and find another so fragmented, you won't.....

But that doesn't stop the core games from selling. It's that there are so few, which was probably the intent of the third parties.

Try finding those core games in the wall of shovelware you see at the retail stores. You have to go through a lot of crap at Gamestop to find the core games. Walmart doesn't have much of a selection outside of the cliche genres the Wii is known for.

It seems like a lot of new Wii games are released every week. Most of which is shovelware. And I know the Wii section at retail stores isn't getting any bigger. I think its possible we aren't seeing core games at many stores to make room for new shovelware.

"Try finding those core games in the wall of shovelware you see at the retail stores."

If there were more of the core games, they would be easier to find. I know this because the PS2 had loads of shovelware as well.

Well every console seems to have a fair share of shovelware. But I think the Wii is the first time we've seen it do extremely well.

Also the PS2 and Wii audience are clearly very different. Looking at the top 50 sellers of both consoles makes that very clear.

3rd party support would be marginally better, much like last gen with the GC. But it be totally pointless for Nintendo to release a new console with the one they got selling as well as it is, and from the looks of thing Nintendo doesn't even need the third parties, at least not their best efforts. I'd love to see this all change though, what I mean by that is, I would like to see some 3rd party release a title rivaling the best Nintendo has to muster on their own console.

"But I think the Wii is the first time we've seen it do extremely well."


Again, you're not doing the research. Those have sold well since the NES days. The Seal Of Quality was merely marketing and actually allowed some shovelware to get through, just with the promise they weren't as bad as those in the Atari days.

I remember walking through game store shelves since the early 90s to just the other day, and shovelware was always prominent. It's just developers are denying the Wii the bigger games to offset them. So again, it's the lack of the bigger games. The shovelware is just an excuse.

if it was easy to port from ps3 and xbox 360 then they probably would. But if not then it is very unlikely

70% of US households with a Wii also have/had a PS2.  I;d say their top 50s look radically different largely because their software lineups look radically different.

Also, is there actually any 3rd party PS1, PS2, GBA or DS game that alone managed 2%+ of overall 3rd party sales?  I think maybe San Andreas on PS2, though I'm not sure (what are total PS2 software sales?) and I can't think of *anything* that'd be close for the others?

I was saying 2% in any given year, not 2% life time....

Based on what I hear Wii is moving more software than the PS2 so I would expect annual software sales for the PS2 to have been around 200 million units or less....

Even if I take the 200 million units number there are quite a few PS2 titles that sold 4 million units or more in a year....