Wii Have Problems?
Author: AF Duncan
May 7th, 2008
There’s an interesting article on Game Funk that calls out and discusses the main criticism of the Wii: a distinct lack of good games, and a plethora of ludicrous ones. Something called “shovelware” seems to be the main culprit according to them.
Shovelware is a term used to denote software churned out solely to turn a quick buck. Generally, there is very little effort put into these titles, and it shows. When you think of shovelware, titles like movie tie-ins or the latest Hannah Montanna games should immediately come to mind.
So how did this happen? How did so much shovelware infestate the Wii’s library? A multitude of factors have contributed to this situation.
The insinuation is that Nintendo is somewhat taking advantage of their main audience, who largely skews way, way younger and therefore are: A) fanatically attracted to popular brand names, and B) uninformed consumers.
Either way, it doesn’t seem to to bother the public at large at all, who laudably seem to want their video games to remain a diversion and not become an all-consuming lifestyle. So, I doubt Nintendo is losing any sleep over the “problem.”
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16 Responses to “Wii Have Problems?”
May 7th, 2008 at 7:09 am
I don’t necessarily agree that Nintendo’s core audience is kids. It’s true that they’ve historically positioned their consoles as kids-friendly, but when they started their decline (N64 & GameCube), it was the older hardcore fans who kept them afloat.
I think the problem is that the Wii itself has successfully attracted new demographics (read: people who never played games before, meaning older folks and more women — not really people who are younger, though the Wii is popular with kids, for sure) and are uninformed. This has let companies shovel garbage quickly onto the system to take advantage of these buyers who don’t know any better.
May 7th, 2008 at 8:44 am
I think their lack of knowledge is, in a way, a plus to both sides. Sure, the companies can release less sophisticated, and often buggier, games, but at the same time, the consumer doesn’t know better. More than that, I don’t know if the consumers would know what to do if they DID know better.
Let’s look at it this way. I never played Tony Hawk 1. I played and really liked Tony Hawk 2, and I loved the hell out of Tony Hawk 3. And then 4 came out, and they added some new types of moves, and changed up the way that objectives were handled, moving it from a “you have 2 minutes to get as much done as possible, but with generally easier objectives” to “you have a tiny slice of time to get this one objective done, but you decide when the timer starts” gameplay. A lot of people really liked that, but I found it a lot harder. And then they kept that up for several more iterations and added more tricks, and made the game just generally harder. The really hardcore folks embraced it, but I skipped a couple generations of the game, and didn’t really get back into it until the last one, which, surprise, returned a lot of stuff to how it was done in THPS3. This pissed off a lot of folks, but it also gained them a new audience that just couldn’t hang at the higher difficulty level with the super-tight controls.
One of the main reasons the “bad” stuff on Wii is panned is that it’s just too easy and that the only difficulty is in learning how to get things done with bad gameplay and control setups. But if you look back at almost all the games that we as longtime gamers played to get to the point we’re at now, that’s always been true. When Shinobi or Golden Axe was released for the Genesis, they were seen as masterworks, but if you played them now, I’d be surprised if you could stand them for more than a nostalgic half hour. Their controls are fairly loose and sloppy (d-pad only, no analog), the difficulty is more about getting around simplistic design (I can jump, but I can’t pull myself up onto a ledge?), and they are exercises in frustration until you get around these issues. But at the time, they seemed like a quantum leap, because we just didn’t know any better. Even the crap titles are viewed nostalgically by someone because that’s what they learned from.
The new Wii gamers are basically in that same situation. They finally have something they enjoy playing, probably because of the more intuitive control mechanics, and they’re playing their Alex Kidd and Bonk the Caveman equivalents. And we’re off to the side, bitching about their game choices just like English teachers bitching about students that prefer to read comic books or YA lit instead of more mature literature. And the thing is, we just have to give some of them time, and they’ll begin to demand and therefore receive better stuff. For now, let’s just them enjoy Archie and Goosebumps; they’ll catch up eventually.
May 7th, 2008 at 10:17 am
I think it’s irrefutable that the wii’s core audience is kids. I’m not placing qualitative judgment on that, but the core audience is kids.
May 7th, 2008 at 11:55 am
“I think it’s irrefutable that the wii’s core audience is kids. I’m not placing qualitative judgment on that, but the core audience is kids.”
But if the core audience is kids, then what is a game like “Wii Fit,” Nintendo’s biggest title of the year, doing on the system? Cause an exercise game being featured on Good Morning America isn’t targeting kids at all. I’d argue it’s because the Wii’s core audience is “casual” gamers, a demographic Nintendo all but created with the system.
But it’s true, games like Mario, Zelda, et al are definitely all-ages games. There’s no denying that. But even then, I think fans of games like “Super Mario Galaxy” are well, people like me, who’ve grown up with Nintendo.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
many people don’t care about reviews or ratings. anything thats popular, people will impulse buy & watch. i’m sure the ratio is similiar to other systems and mediums in good stuff bought to crappy stuff bought. sure the ratio probably leans more in the crappy direction but its still probably in the ball park
May 7th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
This article talks as if the Wii was just another platform and it’s not. Nintendo is doing something different with their hardware and unfortunately, traditional games don’t really fit the Wii model that well.
Every system gets shovelware. As long as that stuff makes money, it’ll be out there. Did anyone really need to play The Golden Compass game in order to know that it would suck? Hell, I’m sure the developers knew that as they were making it!
I think some of the fault re: the Wii rests with developers not having any unique ideas on what to do with the new control scheme. Now, in addition to bad gameplay, bad story, bad physics, bad voice acting, etc, you can add uninspired controls tacked on to the Wii’s unique wireless controller system.
Daniel Brooks understands-Nintendo is trying something completely different with things like Wii fit. You can’t fight Sony and Microsoft on the same fronts. They’ve got graphical powerhouses and the name recognition for action, gore, fighting, driving, etc. Nintendo has gone in a completely different direction and some get it and some don’t. I’ve found you have to be a much more discerning video game buyer with the Wii but the good stuff is great and well worth it.
May 7th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
I have to agree with Tae here. Nintendo’s successfully targeted the Wii at everybody, there’s no denying that. But I would still argue the Wii’s core audience — their MAIN audience and the one that’s making the Wii a phenomenon, right — is kids. Just like the 360’s core audience is male hardcore gamers and like the core audience of “Grey’s Anatomy” is females age 18-35.
May 7th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
The Wii’s biggest problem is availability. I want to walk into a store and buy one, not hope someday that I will be one of the lucky few to be there when they have one.
May 7th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
What’s interesting is that when you search for information on Wii demographics, Nintendo and business related articles claim that the demo is incredibly broad, while gamer and opinion sites are maintaining the same position Tae and Andrew are espousing. Dan’s pointing to the Wii Fit as being their most successful title to date tends to bear out the former, since it’s being marketed almost exclusively to the over-25 set, but it’s hard to argue against the obviously all-ages (ie: kid friendly) games the platform tends to sport.
Nintendo maintains that the average Wii user age is 29 - that says “not kids” to me.
May 7th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
it could be at that age because there are many parents and families including adults and kids playing with wii wiis. That beats a kid audience and an xbox audience
@someguy - true dat yo. I finally have enough money again. I still hard to get a wii. Frye’s had some in bundles. blah.
May 7th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Ok, so, whatever the gd demographics are, what’s with Nintendo dumping out cheap p.o.s. cash-in titles?
Although my two cents is in line with JG’s: I don’t think people really care very much and there’s enough good out there to keep folks happy. I’m a very casual gamer and I only need 4-5 quality games a year at best to be pleased. I’m betting most Wii pwners are of the same mind. And at least the Wii games seem to have a lot of replay value.
May 7th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
Nintendo doesn’t pump out the crap games - third party companies do and Nintendo reaps the licensing dollars. As long as it’s fairly benign, Nintendo’ll approve any crap that comes along so long as they make few bucks on it.
Compltely unsupported by any facts theory - game developers didn’t know WTF to expect with the Wii until it dropped, so not many invested time/money into developing games that genuinely take advantage of the system (outside of Nintendo’s in-house projects). In another year or so, I predict we’ll ee an influx of quality Wii games.
May 8th, 2008 at 10:45 am
Here’s another crackpot theory: a lot of titles get developed with multiple platforms in mind. Since the Wii doesn’t use a typical control setup like Sony and Microsoft AND since the Wii doesn’t have the processing power of the other two, ports of popular games may not be as easy to pull off for Nintendo.
I’ve got friends chomping at the bit for the next Resident Evil installment and they have a Wii but there’s been no commitment from Capcom for the Wii. It’s a no-brainer as far as sales but from what I’ve read, it sounds like it might not be so easy to develop RE5 for, say, the PS3 and then port it to the Wii.
May 8th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
JG: I was listening to a podcast…I think it was 1UP…and they were saying how the developers at Capcom really do love HD, and great graphics, and massive levels, and they want to push the boundaries of what’s possible. The Wii doesn’t give them a chance to do that; yet the Wii is in 10 million homes while the PS3 is in 3 million. So what do you do? I think most of the Wii ports we see are made off of PS2 builds, not the Ps3 or 360. When PS2 development stops, I wonder where that leaves the Wii? Because like you said, you just can’t port from the PS3/360 to the Wii. It’s impossible. The only new game I know of where the Wii is getting its own version, from the ground up, is Ghostbusters, which looks very realistic on PS3/360, and very (awesomely) cartoony on Wii, where the Wiimote is your proton gun and you throw the trap with the nunchuk.
May 9th, 2008 at 7:29 am
Daniel: That makes sense. Graphically, the Wii is a lot closer to PS2 than anything else (’cept the GameCube). Cutting ports out of the equation has to be REALLY limiting for non-Nintendo studios. That just leaves us with good original content, which is few and far between right now.
I don’t have a Wii yet but I’m looking forward to getting one and playing games like DeBlob and Okami which are supposedly ground-up builds for the Wii. These are just two of a handful of titles that I’ve followed in the press from development to release. I’m with Duncan though-I only need 4-5 good games per year and I think as long as you do your homework, you can easily find those 4-5 right now. I think there will always be at least that every year on the Wii. As long as you don’t want Resident Evil.
May 12th, 2008 at 10:41 am
John G: Yeah man, if 4-5 games a year is your bag, Wii will be more than fine. Super Mario Galaxy was my favorite game last year. Amazing game. Wii’s also really fun multiplayer, with people who’ve played games or not. And as for your/Steve’s prediction about good Wii games coming from 3rd parties, Stephen Speilberg’s new game with EA, Bloom Blox, is getting pretty strong reviews.