This generation, Nintendo worked hard to court third-party publishers with much more “vigor” than it has in the past.   

What it has gotten is a lot of quantity. Unfortunately, it has not gotten a lot of “quality.”

Then the “shovelware” avalanche commenced – with small publishers bringing out budget titles, sometimes based upon late PS2 releases.  

Unfortunately, seeing that these titles sold quickly because of their price and occasionally because they became a “must have” title (e.g., Carnival Games), higher profile publishers began to lower their sites on the Wii – using it as a virtual “cash cow “ (Carnival Games probably kept 2K afloat while Rock Star was working on GTA 4).  

This led to an even greater crush of less-than-great games. And with so many similar things out there – sales have dropped on a per title basis. The result has been statements by third-party developers talking about games not selling while never addressing the quality of those games – and in the next breath stating their confidence in the salability of games using the new motion technologies being readied by the competing consoles.

Where will this end?  In my opinion with a continued shakeout of developers who just don’t get that quality sells – particularly in a crowded marketplace and during times when people are reducing their spending on non-required items (the global economic recession).

Personally, I have bought and enjoyed some “shovelware” from smaller developers and been burnt by similar “party” offerings from larger firms.  I just wish that companies had a better idea of what they can do and should be doing with the Wii.

Mike from Morgantown

Hey Mike, do you think Malstrom usually posts interesting things on his blog?....he has a theory a lot of 3rd parties are putting shovelware..and shovelware ONLY...on the Wii on purpose to try and stop its growth somehow.

Do you think it´s a crazy theory or it´s actually a very good one?

"Do you think it´s a crazy theory or it´s actually a very good one?"

The logic is that Nintendo is changing course and rather than just go with it, they fight the change.

And history does back this up. Why did World War I have so many senseless casualties? Because the leaders refused to acknowledge that the tactics from the last wars were obsolete.

That was when human lives were being lost. A little thing like losing money and jobs isn't enough to make these developers realize supporting the Wii is good and attacking it is bad.

I would of thought the Wii outselling the ps3 and the xbox360 would encourage more 3rd party support.

That would be ascribing a level of intelligence to many game companies which I am not sure that they possess.

Mike from Morgantown

Pretty much spot on. What happened is Nintendo made it easier to develope on the Wii and it started getting that "PS2 bulk" as I like to call it. They get out the titles to sell off name and picture rather than actual quality. You can call it shovelware.

Thus what happened is the magnitude was there, and the main competition is for shelf space. Now, this has also brought some bigger titles to the Wii but they have not had the marketing or "publisher push" behind them to be able to "win" the shelf space wars that is occurring on Wii. Same thing happened on PS2 and you saw the big name titles winning... even beating out 1st party names. On Wii it has become the exact opposite. Nintendo, obviously, strongly markets there games and is easily winning the shelf space wars with a few developer's games picking up a victory every now and then.

So yes there push has allowed more quantity but that quality never came. And with the Wii now infringing on almost 1000 released games, marketing and advertising matter even more than they ever have... potentially more than PS360 games. Developers screw themselves by not having more money spent on their marketing and advertising... of course some spend so little on development so why should they.

Well imo it has worked against it, almost no 3rd party games that interests me. Some of Wii's best 3rd party games are ports of old games, that says something imo.

A new Medal of Honor was anounced today(i saw it now on this site), and guess what, no Wii version, what a shock..

"A new Medal of Honor was anounced today(i saw it now on this site), and guess what, no Wii version, what a shock.."

Didn't look that interesting either way. It would have been nice to have it on the Wii, but unless it was going to be as good as Heroes 2, it wouldn't have been worth it.

Could someone give an example of Nintendo working hard to court a third-party? I can think of many such examples from Microsoft (courting Japanese third-parties, giving a $50 million loan to Rockstar, internal teams to help third-parties such as Epic, various system bundles with third-party games, sharing advertising costs, etc) but I'm not aware of even close to that kind of effort from Nintendo.

The only solution to this would be Nintendo beinging back the seal of quality, or limiting the number of games a pulbisher can release yearly.

Of course, Nintendo will never do such thing, because every game a 3rd party company sells, means more money to Nintendo themselves. By doing that, the amount of 3rd party SW would decrease dramatically, and as we all know, Nintendo cares about money, not happy customers as we would like it to be.