Nintendo systems have more shovelware titles than Microsoft and Sony combined
Monday, January 5th, 2009 at 8:30pm by Will
When you go to a game store how often do you find yourself looking at various Wii and DS titles and wondering if you should buy them? There are numerous games released every week for every system and it really is a hard choice to pick up a game you know nothing about. Some even have very alluring box art and sometimes false promises of greatness, but you just aren’t really sure what to get out of fear of wasting your money on some type of shovel-ware garbage.
I honestly find myself doing this little dance a lot as of late. This is because when I usually go to a game store to buy some games with some spare cash, I like to blindly dive into one hoping to find something good to play. Like taking that chance and picking up an obscure title like Disgaea that might be actually be good.
As a person who loves to play DS and Wii games I find this to be a serious problem. Out of all the systems out on the market I find myself having to check the back of more Wii and DS boxes than that of any Sony or Microsoft game. Not because the PS3 or Xbox360 has less games than Nintendo, but because Nintendo’s consoles have a over abundance of cheap third party titles that are drowning out anything that might be noticeably good.
Is this hurting the game industry? Probably not at all, since most gamers who have been playing for a few years follow certain series and certain companies. Would you buy a “Real Arcade” game over a “Capcom” game? Not likely.
However, the real problem I see with this is that if you were a new company just trying to jump into the market with your games. Releasing them as a third party game for Nintendo, how would it actually do on the market? How would they distinguish themselves from the constant tidal waves of shovel-ware that is being released? It would probably be really hard for them.
I ponder why companies like Ubisoft release titles like Catz, Dogz, Imagine: Baby Sitter, and other such games like this. In all honesty it’s good to see that the Nintendo’s Seal of Quality doing it’s job, printing them money in cart sales for these games. While locking out hard working developers like Bob, and publishing more “Ninja Bread Men” than we can shack a WiiMote at.
January 5th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
You mean the Wii actually has more shovel-ware thn the PS2?
I find that hard to believe
January 5th, 2009 at 11:01 pm
Nintendo has shovelware? This is news?
And yeah, I think this is hurting the industry. Nintendo does have the casual market, and that’s mostly people who aren’t able to tell the difference between a game made by a reputable developer and a lame port or movie cash-in. And if they purchase shovelware titles, does the Wii not look like a viable market for trash games?
January 5th, 2009 at 11:08 pm
This is nothing new. Every system has it’s fair share of shovelware. Check out your old systems like an NES or Playstation, plenty of crap gaming to go around.
January 5th, 2009 at 11:23 pm
I agree with Will on this one, folks.
More importantly, if Nintendo wants the “casual,” “new” gamers to get interested in more traditional titles, this is going to scare many of them away from that. They’ll look at the charming box art of Ninjabread Man, buy it because it’s significantly cheaper than most of what else is on the shelf, and then wonder why the game is so “hard,” when in fact it’s actually broken. Not good if they want the Blue Ocean Strategy to actually work.
January 5th, 2009 at 11:26 pm
I don’t see where all the critism that Nintendo isn’t friendly to 3rd party developers comes from. The amount of shovelware shows just how much Nintendo harbors 3rd party developers. They could turn these companies away, but they’re allowing them to create titles for the Wii, ensuring brand loyalty in the future.
Also each Nintendo generation you’ll a few good newish 3rd party companies enter the public spotlight by releasing games for Nintendo systems. For example Factor 5, High Voltage, Silicon Knights, HAL Laboratory, Rare and Retro Studios all became successful thanks to Nintendo’s help both financially and because of Nintendo’s support. Compare that to the other rival consoles. There really aren’t any games from the smaller indie studios the majority of the games come from EA, Activision, Eidos, SEGA, Ubisoft and 1st party studios.
January 5th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
@ Andrew G.
if they want it to work?
to paraphrase a great movie, “war’s over; nintendo dropped the big one”
it ALREADY works man! this is all about making it work BETTER.
January 5th, 2009 at 11:57 pm
Oh you’re just being too harsh! Sure, Ninjabread Man had a few control hiccups, but at least it was innovative!
January 6th, 2009 at 7:11 am
There seems to be this myth going around that shovelware sells these gigantic numbers on the Wii. They really don’t. I mean really, the titles like Jenga and stuff really don’t pull down these huge numbers.
This is really just “Wii has most games, story at 8.” And a lot of the games press, after having turned a blind eye to PS2 shovelware and pointless PSP pool and Poker games, now all of a sudden care about the existence of games that nobody really buys anyway.
IF they want to improve third party output, these press sites should probably petition the 3rd parties and the stores carrying the titles for relief. Not making huge editorials blaming Nintendo for somehow being responsible for this. I mean Nintendo makes Mario Galaxy, SSBB, Metroid Prime 3. All three high-selling (MP3 is a million seller and has sold more than Super Metroid), high quality titles. They are not responsible, nor influencing these third parties who wanna make a quick buck off of naive new gamers. If anything, they are screwing themselves over because their awful titles have been directing gamers to Nintendo games.
In fact, looking through the list of top sellers, I’m really not seeing that much “shovelware.” Yeah, I’m seeing a few mediocre games here or there, but nothing that can really be classified as “shovelware” like that Monkey Mischief game.
January 6th, 2009 at 7:18 am
I don’t think it’s just the Wii, its the DS as well that has tons of shovelware. I agree with what Will is saying but should we be blaming Nintendo or should we be blaming the third party publishers like Ubisoft.
January 6th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Well, you can’t just go in blind and pick ANY game at random for ANY console and expect to get a great gem. That’s why you RESEARCH a game before buying to see if it has what it takes to give you a good fun-to-price ratio.
Honestly, I didn’t find this post informative or interesting… sounded more like regular bitchin for no reason and no need. Always liked the posts at Infendo, but this one dropped the ball.
January 6th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Everyone is different, so I’m just speaking for myself here… but I only have enough time/money to play 10 or 12 games each year anyway. Everything after that gets pretty much forgotten, so I don’t care how many bad games are on Wii as long as there are enough good titles (or niche titles that appeal to me) worth owning.
That said, I’m disappointed in how few major development studios are willing to create top-tier games for Wii. According to VGChartz, Wii now owns almost half of the worldwide console market at this point — soon it will have sold more than PS3 and XBox 360 combined! I haven’t seen any evidence that Nintendo is at fault for the lack of third party triple-A support and don’t want to start pointing fingers, but there is definitely something amiss when the dominating market leader gets snubbed like this.
January 6th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Personally, I find myself wondering more about whether I should buy some of the DS titles I see in the shelves than Wii titles. I find the entertainment value of a DS game to be usually higher than the average Wii game, probably because of its portability.
But besides that, isn’t it possible that the reason you wonder more about Nintendo system games than 360 or PS3 games is because of downloadable demos? I’ve been buying more DS games vs. Wii games precisely because of the few demos that come out on the Nintendo Channel, and I buy more 360 games for the same reason. About a third of the games I play the demo of I end up buying, more than from any recommendation or good review on a website or magazine.
Another point of attraction in a game for me is how often I see my friends playing it on Xbox LIVE, something you can’t do for Wii games.
January 6th, 2009 at 9:29 pm
You can’t use yourself as scientific data, Invis.
January 7th, 2009 at 9:23 pm
This article seems to only exist as flame bait. You obviously pay no attention to the PC or the PS2 as both exceed anything offered on Wii when it comes to shovelware, as both offer pretty much the same games on Wii but have been putting them out for 8 years on PS2 and 15 years on PC. Has it hurt the industry at all? Of course not because it is still growing. Gaming started out casual. 60 year old women were playing Pac Man at drug stores around the world. Garbage games may go all the way back to 2600 but some of you have no clue what shovel ware actually is. Does Wii have it? Of course but not near as much as you claim. You take a game that is aimed at the 7-10 year old demographic and call it shovelware because it doesnt meet your standards. Forgetting that it was never intended for you to begin with.