Game Funk reports:
The Wii, released alongside the PS3 in November 2006, has seen a considerable 189 games released. Of these titles, a whoping 69, or 37% are complete trash. On the flipside, there are only 20 good games, making up a minuscule 11% – and of those 20, 4 of them are ports of last generation PS2/Gamecube games!
Nintendo Seal of Quality, GET!
Does Hannah Montana push the envelope? Of course not.
Does Wii sports push the envelope? Obviously it does.
Is Sony or XBox pushing the envelope in regards to giving us new and creative types of games? No, they are pushing the same stuff as always just in a new and brighter outfit.
I do hope you can see this, because it’s really not all that difficult.
The Wii is pushing the envelope whether people like you can understand it or not. Obviously not EVERY game being offered is doing this, BUT the Wii is the only system right now that has some games that are. Don’t be so ignorant in your assumption (and your reference) that because some games are trash (like HM), that the Wii is not changing the face of the video game industry.
The fact is that if I want new and exciting games that no one else offers, I will play a Wii game (and no, not HM). If I want a traditional FPS, RPG, etc.. type of game I can either play the XBox, PS, or even better my PC.
cheers residential and negrin
also, nice work Eolirin- it’s too bad the data isn’t very clean. but the differences do sound significant to me, depending on how you split it. I’d love to see how these ratios trend over time. Perhaps the PS2 had more crap at the start?
i think the ‘most mkt share = most junk’ argument only carries so far. the low percent of highly rated games probably reflects this, but also reflects the ‘casual gamers happily buy crap’ effect.
also, this is a fairly different mkt from last generation. the mkt leader console requires significant alternate development from other platforms. combined, pc, 360, and ps3 have a larger audience, and can use largely the same in game assets (textures, etc). so offhand, i want to say the ‘mkt leader gets more crap games’ effect is diminished a bit, but i’m not 100% on that.
the tension between ‘mkt share = crap’ and ‘casual audience = crap’ is the largest disagreement I see on this article.
@joshdad
mass effect man. THAT’s storytelling. THAT’s what I wanted Twighlight Princess to be.
And there’s a reason reviewers are holding GTA4 above their head as evidence for ‘games as art’. I’m getting my copy (finally) today, but l doubt the 10s are unjustified.
google the bioware’s guys discussion of games versus toys for an interesting (and balanced) perspective.
I’m in no way trying to downplay any Sony or XBox games. They are doing some incredible things with graphics, things that the Wii will never even come close to touching (and if graphics are your thing, then obviously you will be more satisfied with one of these sytems).
All I’m simply trying to do is point out that the Wii is the only system that is trying to go in a different direction, a direction that is obviously appealing to mass hordes of consumers. A direction that is changing the face of video-gaming (or as I stated before, pushing the envelope of where games are heading.)
As this article points out, yes, there are a lot of bad, junk games being pushed on the Wii, games that will be purchased by many casual gamers who aren’t as crititical as to what kind of game they are getting. But these junkers should in no way determine or set the standard for the overall direction the Wii is taking us. Yes, it is possible for the Wii to have both Junk and and Gold in their lineup. Hopefully as time goes by, the 3rd party developers will get more on board, and start giving us games that match the quality of most of Nintendo’s offerings, but until then, we (or at least most) can put up with the junk, and enjoy the innovative and envelope-pushing games that are also being offered.
Negrin, I do agree that there is often times a bit too much fanboyism and not enough critical examination, but that being said, Deepthought wasn’t exactly being a voice of reason either… The response to what he said was overboard, yeah, but his points weren’t exactly grounded either. Being an anti-fanboy in a bunch of fanboys doesn’t make your statements any more valid.
There are some extremely severe problems with the metrics that the article uses. Even ignoring the fact that the sample size for review scores is too small to deal with the fact that there are a large number of games that have a 15-20 point differential, and that some of the numbers are based off of a single review score, something that’d make a statistician cringe if he heard someone was using those numbers for statistical analysis… A lot of it does have to deal with the fact that we’re entering into new markets, and that critics are basing reviews on preconceptions of what gaming should be. Wii Sports for instance, is not ranked above 80%, yet, for a very large portion of the world population, it’s a vastly better game than Halo 3, which is ranked in the 90s. And that’s because for a large portion of the world’s population, Halo 3 is *completely* unplayable. Someone who is really into Halo probably is going to not only find more fault in Wii Sports, they’re also not going to get how *important* games like it are in bringing in new users (And it’s not cause they’re stupid, it’s because the gameplay isn’t for *them*). Truth is, Wii Sports more fun *for me* than any of the Halo games, or, really, any other console FPS will ever be, because I *hate* dual thumbstick controls for FPS games. I can’t aim with them, and I’m not going to spend hours trying to adjust just so I can play games that we’ve seen done better on the PC 10 years ago. “Fun” is too nebulous a metric to make any judgements on, it varies too much from person to person. That makes it so that this isn’t even a valid way of looking at quality when your reviewers primarily consist of a certain type of gamer. So, in addition to the reviews having large differentials, they’re also not even remotely random samplings, which makes using them as any sort of metric for talking about anything other than reviewers themselves difficult. Rather than being able to talk about quality, you can only talk about whether or not a certain type of reviewer likes them. The fact that reviewers are reviewing with an eye to fun, as Deepthought says, is exactly *why* they invalidate themselves, not proof that they don’t.
To illustrate: If I were reviewing one of the Halo games, it’d score much lower because I’d invariably compare it to PC offerings, and it’d come up lacking. Anything good about it I’ve seen already and grown somewhat jaded to, and there are lots of design issues that make it less than stellar if you strip those parts away. This is of course, absolutely *not* fair of me to do, because it should be judged on it’s own merits, not on the merits of other things. Thing is, no one does that. Everything we do, everything we see, is colored by our experience; as humans we’re hardwired to be like that. It’s very hard to divorce what we know from what we’re looking at currently and treat it as if it were in a vacuum.
So when you compare something like Wii Sports to previous console offerings it’s also going to come up lacking, and it’s going to be just as unfair to judge it based on that fact as it would be for me to judge Halo based on comparison to the PC realm. Halo was for console gamers who never *saw* any of that stuff before, Wii Sports is for people who have never *been* gamers. Both games are thus very important to their respective audiences because they *shift* paradigms for that group. But both games will be panned by anyone who “knows better”.
So Joshdad, is actually right. And he’s right because there still aren’t enough games out for the Wii right now that shifting 10 or so of them from less than 80% to over 80% wouldn’t be a big shift in those precentages. In fact, I just went through the Game Rankings list, and I can come up with at least 13 games from there that I would put at over 80, and the user rankings tend to agree with me. Doing that would shift the 11% to 17%, putting us about in line with the PS2 (This also highlights that since the Wii’s sample size is still really small, the percentages are going to fluctate a lot over the next few months/years. 10 more good titles out of the same number of game releases is a significant shift for the Wii; for something like the PS2 it’d be quite a bit less than a percentage point). And a lot of those games are of the “hard to classify” or “caters to the non-gamer” types, stuff like Big Brain Academy and Endless Ocean. Mario Party 8 is also on that list, because the ONLY reason it gets panned is because it’s the 8th game in the series, and it’s getting long in the tooth to the reviewers. But for the more than 2 million Wii owners in Japan alone that have never purchased another system before… it’s brand new, and from the viewpoint of those gamers, it’s *damn* good. Sales numbers support that.
There’s still a lot of shovelware of course, but it’s market leader, and it’s cheaper to develop for, so that should be *expected*.
@Deepthought, I have never found *any* Bioware game to be a good standard for storytelling. Personally, I’ve never been able to connect with a single character in any of their games, they always seemed too be too full of awesome ideas that were realized in ways that make them seem fake. So, sorry, I don’t buy Mass Effect as being a pinnacle of storytelling in games. I realize I’m in the vast minority here, since people seem to eat up everything that Bioware puts out, but perhaps my standards are just higher; I think Dragonlance is pretty trash too. Honestly, I don’t think I can point at a single RPG that has a storyline that isn’t at best hackish compared to other media types. There are perhaps a handful of adventure games that managed to pull off something that actually elevated the writing above that (although not into the truly higher realms), but that’s been about it. And this is not to say that they’re bad games – although in Bioware’s case, coupled with combat mechanics that I’ve always found to be about as fun as watching paint dry (Mass Effect not withstanding on that point) there wasn’t much for me to love – merely that games as storytelling is still in it’s infancy and there’s very little worth pointing at and going “damn that was a GREAT story”. Most of the time it really, really, wasn’t, though it was often good enough that coupled with the gameplay mechanics, it was worth experiencing.
GTA IV doesn’t even remotely come close to Games as Art either. Pathologic, which was roughly panned by just about every reviewer, does however. It’s probably one of the only games I’ve seen or heard about that actually applies game mechanics to further the thematic points of the game. Which, sadly for the review scores, are exhaustion, desperation, and hopelessness. It’s not very entertaining to play because of it. But a game which is art is more likely to *not* be “fun” than it is to be an entertaining experience. Enriching, deep, fulfilling, sure. But not “fun”. You don’t watch stuff like Citizen Kane and Schindler’s List for the entertainment value or the escapism.
Er, that came across totally wrong. “A game that is art is more likely to be *not fun* than it is to be.”
@Joshdad
So what Wii Sports is pushing the envelope? Is this what the shovelware article is about? No, but still you seem to have made it into an argument, heck knows why. What Wii Sports did is obvious. But for one thing, it was 1.5 years ago, and for another, it still doesn’t change the fact I die a little inside when I see some of the shovelware Wii games. And Hannah Montana doesn’t even sound like it’s the worst of them by a long shot. The article’s main point is that maybe Nintendo should be a little stricter. And why not? Sure, I know: bling. But we’re all expecting more from Ninny, aren’t we?
Still, as far as pushing the envelope is concerned, I still think it’s less than Nintendo promised. As I said before, I honestly can’t believe we don’t have more innovative, clever Mii-based games in the spirit of Wii Sports after all this time. Believe it or not, but a large group of people–both complete non-gamers and “hardcore” gamers with little love for Nintendo goofiness–much prefer the “safe” style of Wii Sports to oddball formats like Warioware, Raving Rabbids or Mario Party. Why Nintendo doesn’t capitalize on that is beyond me.
@Eolirin
Wow, that’s some serious weight right there. Respect, sir. I see where you’re coming from and I can’t really disagree with you. The point is, sure, so the article is unscientific. So what? I don’t think it takes its use of statistics too seriously. Does it change the fact it comes to a sort of right conclusion? C’mon, the author is far from being a hateful hardcore PS3 fanboy. The way I see it he’s one of the good guys. The amount of slagging he got here really surprised me.
Oh, and while on the subject on deepthought’s comments about Nintendo’s originality or lack thereof. Come on guys, we’re all big on Nintendo notalgia and all that… But shouldn’t we agree Nintendo *has* been milking that nostalgia for a really long time now? To the point that I–a Mario fan–can’t get myself to thinking about buying Mario Kart Wii anytime soon, good as it might be, because I just can’t stomach the thought of getting yet another Mario game. With all due respect to all the creative, insanely original stuff Nintendo does (I truly can’t remember when had been the last time my gaming experience had been so special and magical as the first time or second time I played Galaxy), aren’t they among the most conservative companies in the business at the same time, self-contradictory as it might sound? Sure, a lot of it has to do with the fact their most devoted fanbase cries out in outrage every time they try to tweak with the beloved, tired-and-true IPs… but still.
Wow, I ranted so much I don’t even know if all that went anywhere. All in all, I just think that the whole topic isn’ t really something to argue over, but still emotions are flying way too high
Not argue??? Now what fun would that be?
It’s the responses that people think out and write up like the ones for this article that make me love all of our readers! Passionate discussion for the win!
i GUESS YOU KNOW WE COULD TALK MORE ABOUT THE GOOD GAMES Negrin. O0ps sorry Why even talk about the crap? It’s there and we all know it talking about it isn’t going to make it go away is it? Are you buying any of those games so why does it matter? People talking about how much crap XP was but not they swear by it and hate vista which actually runs pretty well if you know what your doing.
Seriously if you spend more time talking about the games you are having fun with then you are effectively reducing the damage of crap. Keep posting all of these articles about crap and more publish my give it a try. Example the PS2 had almost nothing worth playing for the 1st year and a half even though every one had one. Yet as soon as one good game came out every one was acting like jesus just came back! I mean really what good is talking about the Wii’s crap games doing for you? Oh I forget it’s the last weapon you can use since the fad thing is not working huh? Oh your not a fanboy ok. So what is talking about the crap going to do for you? The crap is only interesting to talk about if you actually don’t like what is out.Then it a great source for you to talk junk about some thing lots of people are having fun with. Then again you read so many I play Wii sports and I’m hardcore post that most of you with out a Wii don’t even know whats good on it, due to the low scores that some of the games get even though people actually like these games. I mean really maybe we need a divide here. The Wii is a console and it should be treated like one. Even thought the Game boy was out when the SNES was it was still able to get good reviews that where far and honest. The whole promotion of the Wii has so much crap does what for any one but bash? Ok they can enforce a seal and suddenly that gets used against them also.
We can be mad at who every we want to but the only way things are going to change is to actually buy good games. If you like the Wii and you feel like there is nothing on it then maybe you should look a little harder for good games. It would seem some thing is happening in the industry and it is related to a certain age bracket(23-36) yet these are the same guys that are making your games. After being beat down for years by the hardcore and trying to please them at the same time things are getting even harder. Just notice how one game sales ok across all of the systems rather than a lot. GTA4 is great and fascinating but what happens when that wears off? It’s crazy but people said the same about the Wii right? Now what happen when a game does not deliver a world like this from now on yet it’s a better game? Will it be marked down because of this?
Also alot of you should know most of those games got high scores because of the graphics mostly. It’s expected for the next 2 to 3 years. Give it time and people will loose interest just look at UT3 and crysis on the PC. O yeah yeah those are the only games on the radar for the PC yet no one has more shovel ware than those guys and you guys should also know that the casuals are actually really picky and it is even harder to make it as a POP CAP game. Just like how the hardcore love there version of the latest FPS spin the POP games people love clones too yet only the ones that cater to them.
Also too Negrin you’ve made your point you don’t like nintendo because of the milking of mario. OK then fine you could have said that to begin with. I’ve been playing games for so long that it doesn’t matter who they put at the wheel of a mario kart game hell it could be bonk or astral form sega! At the end of the day it would come down to his speed weight and what not. I’m not mad at Disney for using mickey or at CBS for use that damn eye icon for so damn long! What you have there is a hang up there and technical it’s your problem and not nintendo’s. Mario is just like them using their own logo I mean dang man get a new logo! Red letters Pffffff, hell that so 70s! Face it man you grew out of nintendo and you where(meaning you are not now) a fan leave them and their fans be! Your acting like a stalker now they are not going to change into what you want because you hate them or dislike their use of IP they created and that you don’t own.
Listen to some of these guys is like some one hating them self because they played pokemon growing up yet are pissed they even did it! They could make milk mario all they want because it doesn’t matter to me. I got nothing against they IP or their milking it or any of there games because they are still quality and thats why I buy games. And no this isn’t some holly church of nintendo gaming we simply are not as fickle as you are. It’s not that hard to see you know. A good game is a good game even if I have to get a type-2 kit to play it! Yeap I’t getting SF4 the arcade kit! Hellz yeah! There is always some horrible reason why other people like some thing other don’t like.
WOW just WOW playing at FPS and then posting on here is a very bad idea… Sorry about that. Any ways imagine if people kept talking about lair or the fact that every one bought Hal1-2-3 yet every one was playing COD4 but now they are playing GTA… who are you going to play online if every one has moved to the new game? Now imagine if people wrote stuff like that? Some of that isn’t even really true yet most people would push that by the good old logic gate.
@Negrin,
It’s not just that the article is unscientific, it’s also that it fails to examine the situation in any level of sophistication. The Wii is very much where you’d expect considering the factors surrounding it, and it’s not like there’s some horrible shortage of really fun games. As I said, I can easily find at least another ten games that I feel should fall into the 80%+ range, and that puts it close enough with the PS3 that it hardly matters – the Wii btw, already has waay more exclusive games in that range than the PS3 does; 15 to 9, not counting updated ports, and there are 0 games exclusive to the PS3 (though Uncharted comes close) with over a 90% rating too, the Wii has at least 4 or 5. I won’t examine the 360 because of the year head start; I’m not going to put in the effort to sort games by date released and any number that didn’t take the release window into account isn’t useful in the slighest – and the interesting thing is that for a good number of those 10 games, about a third to a half of the reviewers *did* put them in the 80%+ range, but the other 2 thirds or so were below, with some so far below that it really pulled the total average down. That’s the 10-20 point differentials (sometimes more, I saw at least one with all the way up to a 25 point difference, 90% and 65% depending on the review) I was talking about. So my problem is not that he was being a raging fanboy, it’s that he was saying something that made a non-issue into an issue. Every console out there has it’s share of truly shitty games though. The Wii is not unique in this, and you can’t “fix” it either. And the fact that the Wii has so much of it really is a sign that the console is thriving. We haven’t seen this much shit since the PS2!
What *is* an issue is that developers have yet to begin to fully take the thing seriously, but the shovelware is not the cause of that, it’s the result of it. Making the shovelware all go away won’t increase the number of good games, it’ll just decrease the number of games. The developers need to put in more effort before we see an increase in the good stuff. But they’ll learn in time; the hardware sell through will force them to. We saw this with the DS, we’ll see it again here.
Also, on the point of Nintendo franchises:
Yeah, Nintendo does tend to reuse a lot of *characters*, but there’s a key point in this that needs to be considered. Not a single game in any of their franchises has failed to alter the formula in some way. Everything, no matter how many iterations a series has gotten to, pushes something forward. Sometimes it doesn’t turn out as well as they’d hoped (Sunshine, for instance), and sometimes it works even better than anyone expected (Galaxy, and those expectations were high to begin with), but there’s always *something* that pushes the state of the game forward. So I don’t really fault them for reusing Mario, because they’ve never stopped pushing, and none of the characters really have sufficient personality or plot surrounding them that it makes the slightest difference that they’re the same. If it makes it easier to sell the gameplay tweaks, then so be it. It’s always been about the gameplay, and not about anything else. The skins they’re putting on things is irrelevant.