Why does the Wii to this day gets so much hate for having shovelware, but other consoles like the PS2 or DS don't?

[Oscarzx n]

When discussing about the Wii is very common to point as a big weakness of the console the fact that it has too much shovelware, AKA terrible, low quality and low budget games, people really like to point that element of the Wii and bring the console down in the process. Not as much now I'd add since the discussion online about the console is more positive since a lot it is now done by people who were children when they had one and don't care about shovelware, but still, since in this forum there are mostly older people I think many of you have heard or said that about the console.

However, the Wii is far from the only console with lots of shovelware, I'd say the PS2 is the maximum console on that case, it has so many games, thousands, that many of them are obviously gonna be bad, especially european exclusives, in fact many bad Wii games like Ninja Breadman were released also on PS2, and honestly I don't think there is any game on the Wii that is as bad as the stuff Phoenix Games released with the Code Monkeys on PS2, you know those horrible "movies" that included some minigame to pass as games. But even then the PS1 or the DS also had plenty of trash games and they also don't get nearly as much hate.

Is it because it's library is not very strong so shovelware ends up being most of it? I'd say the Wii library when you look as it as a whole is very solid, not the best but there is more than enough if you ignore the fat, which is not different to the PS2 or PS1 or DS.

 

[Oscarzx n]

Oops, added an extra I to "WIi", whatever

 

[Imran]

Because it was a massive market change and a lot of people had meltdowns rationalizing what was happening and "Who cares, it's all shovelware" was the easiest way to do it.

 

[TheDinoman]

PS2 was literally getting all the mega AAA third party stuff like Final Fantasy, GTA, Metal Gear Solid, etc so no one really noticed or cared about the shovelware there as much, I'd reckon.

 

[qaopjlll]

Gamers felt personally insulted that Nintendo would dare to try something different with the Wiii(i)

 

[Jawmuncher]

I've always felt it was less the shovelware and more the waggle and how it brought more casuals en masse to gaming. These are both good things in their own way but could also be seen as troublemsome as they impacted the industry in numerous ways such as Nintendo going with the WiiU and Xbox focusing heavily on Kinect even after the 360.

Only PS really got out of that generation rather unscathed as they went agaisnt the grain and didn't commit to the angle with the PS4.

 

[Strings]

There wasn't even close to enough good third party stuff to balance it out, while the PS2 and DS were flush with awesome third party stuff.

Gamers felt personally insulted that Nintendo would dare to try something different with the Wiii(i)

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Because the DS sure was a super duper conventional system :/

 

[Phil32]

Some (many?) liked to discredit the Wii and its success (whether its sales, its library--which I do think was quite good overlooking the quick cash-in titles) in any way they could, even now to this day. It's unfortunate.

 

[Xeonidus]

Choose one:

Only Wii games or only PS2 games?

 

[Alpheus]

Because it was a massive market change and a lot of people had meltdowns rationalizing what was happening and "Who cares, it's all shovelware" was the easiest way to do it.

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This. People felt literal betrayal over Nintendo's decision to go in that direction. And I suppose more overall fondness for the PS2's library as a whole.

 

[ciddative]

PS2/Xbox had some of the most amazing third-party games ever made throughout their lifespans. Once Wii went full shovel, that's nearly all the Wii had

 

[Speevy]

The Wii's shovelware was seen as something like an opportunity, though.

Low-powered hardware, easy-to-create casual games, copying successful formula.

I realize these games exist for every platform, but seeing this "Well, just swing your arm and there you go." game, well, it's not hard to imagine how it happened.

It's easier to get away with lazy when something looks novel.

Or to put it another way, does grandma (Wii's expanded buyer) really know the difference between Wii Sports and Wii Recreation 7. Between Cooking Mama and Cooking Master.

 

[BassForever]

I love the Wii and motion controls and all the waggle I could get

But lets be honest here

A shovelware game on DS, PS2, or almost any other consoles will on average be better then a shocelware game on Wii? Why? Because bad motion controls are far more detrimental to the play experience then bad "standard" controls.

 

[Dyle]

Because it wasn't getting much good stuff from most publishers along with the bad

 

[Khanimus]

Because the PS2 and DS had a fucking mountain of beloved first and third party support

The Wii had like handful of must-play Nintendo games, a handful of compelling third party curiosities, and would go dead for months at a time.

 

[Duffking]

Because for Wii at least, the system was largely unsupported by major third party publishers, the lineup for the console was basically Nintendo + Shovelware.

Other consoles were a question of Microsoft + Third Parties + Shovelware or Sony + Third Parties + Shovelware. It was less prominent for them as a result.

For DS, I guess the first party offerings were strong enough that people didn't mind, which wasn't quite such the case with the Wii where they were thinner on the ground.

 

[Oscarzx n]

Because the system was largely unsupported by major third party publishers, the lineup for the console was basically Nintendo + Shovelware.

Other consoles were a question of Microsoft + Third Parties + Shovelware or Sony + Third Parties + Shovelware. It was less prominent for them as a result.

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No?, Capcom, Sega, Activision, Ubisoft, Marvelous and others released plenty of good games on it, at least until 2011, then it definitely died, but saying that it was only Nintendo + shovelware is just false.

 

[Dale Copper]

Because it was a massive market change and a lot of people had meltdowns rationalizing what was happening and "Who cares, it's all shovelware" was the easiest way to do it.

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PS2 was literally getting all the mega AAA third party stuff like Final Fantasy, GTA, Metal Gear Solid, etc so no one really noticed or cared about the shovelware there as much, I'd reckon.

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These 2

 

[Grexeno]

Both the PS2 and the DS had more and more frequent good games

 

[Calvinien]

There's tons of shovelware on the switch as well. But nobody cares about shovelware when there are good games to play. The wii could go months, if not years without a significant release that was something other than 'preexisting nintendo franchise- now with waggle!'

Since it missed out on essentially every 3rd party game of note that gen, a stable output of exclusives was even more important....and it did not have many.

Shelves full of just dance and cooking mama are hard to overlook if you are missing out on GTA, RDR, Bioshock, Mass effect, dragon age, halo, uncharted, resistance, killzone, forza, dead rising, dead space, final fantasy et al.

 

[Speevy]

No?, Capcom, Sega, Activision, Ubisoft, Marvelous and others released plenty of good games on it, at least until 2011, then it definitely died, but saying that it was only Nintendo + shovelware is just false.

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When you look at any gaming system, you have to consider the source of the games, even today's games.

Where do they come from, technology-wise?

In 2003 for example, games were largely being developed for consoles with the Playstation 2 in mind. This was the last generation which more or less pulled the cord on the previous one because of everything being upgraded to high definition.

Wii's third party games were sometimes original passion projects from developers that cared about making something unique for the hardware. Other times, they were Playstation 2 and Gamecube games that made the leap to the new hardware. Everything else was Extreme Duck Hunting and Wack a Mole.

 

[nsilvias]

It had a lot of shovelware but the rental to shovelware ratio was way better

 

[AuthenticM]

the ratio of non-shovelware/shovelware was a lot smaller on the Wii, and retailers were stocking up shovelware like crazy and displaying them front and center. It got so bad that certain big retailers (I think Walmart) made the decision to stop buying them.

EDIT:

Here's a Gamedeveloper article (previously Gamasutra) talking about this, back in 2010:

Third-Party Publishers React To Deflating Wii Bubble

The Wii is a challenging environment for developers and publishers, and no magic solution has yet been found -- so Gamasutra examines the state of the market and speaks to publishers and analysts to get some perspective.

www.gamedeveloper.com

But Chris Kramer, Capcom senior director of communications and community, said even though "it was one of the highest-rated Wii games and was beloved by the media, it sold abysmally -- about 120,000 units in 26 months -- for no apparent reason.

Similarly, Japanese publisher Marvelous Entertainment focused heavily on Wii and PSP releases in 2009, but the company found a considerable difference in its success on the two platforms. Four out of its five PSP games in its first fiscal half were profitable while three of its four Wii games during the same period lost money.

According to Kramer, "If you're not Nintendo, it does seem harder to make money on the Wii today compared to the PS3 and the Xbox 360. It's a very tough market to crack and is ever-shifting."

He recalls that when the Wii first launched in North America in November, 2006, simple casual or party games did so well that they soon saturated the market. "Now, I don't even know what the market is," he says. "

One thing's for sure -- the focus has changed. Stores like Target and Best Buy have reportedly told game publishers not to even bother approaching them with collections of mini games, which they will no longer pick up.

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Pachter says that half of the people who bought the Wii -- "the housewives who thought Wii Fit looked like fun, the grandmas who thought that Wii Sports would be a fun thing to play with their grandkids, and the 20-somethings who only wanted to play Guitar Hero or Rock Band... none of them people who you'd call 'gamers'."

"They are not buying much more software. They bought what they wanted and don't feel the need to buy more," he says. "Nor are they aware of what other Wii games are out there. They're oblivious."

It's the other half of the Wii console owners who third-party developers need to address, Pachter says, and Capcom is doing it just right by coming out with a title like Resident Evil whose brand everyone recognizes through movies and simple brand history. Unfortunately, it seems that even that approach may not be working.

"Wii publishers need to concentrate on fewer games but games of higher quality," he says. "There is just too much shovelware around -- like the $15 games in the end-cap bargain bins at Target. Companies like Majesco just spin them out non-stop and there are tons of them. They aren't helping anybody keep their lights on."

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Indeed, a recent GameFly "new release" listing included 62 new titles for the PS3, 72 for the Xbox 360 -- and 145 for the Wii.

Similarly, the current ESRB ratings list shows 696 titles for the PS3, 957 for the Xbox 360 -- and 1,415 for the Wii.

"The sheer number of games being thrown at the Wii is tremendous," according to Matt Matthews, Gamasutra's internal game analyst, who points out that the ESRB lists just 1,392 titles for the Nintendo DS, which has been out since late 2004, and 1,943 titles for the PS2... which has been out for a decade.

"How many of those [Wii games] do you think cost more than $5 million to develop? Probably five," asked Pachter. "And how many cost over $3 million? Probably 100. The problem is that they're so easy to make. I think there are three Wii cheerleader games on the market. There's a lot of that crap around."

Even if a Wii game becomes a bestseller, says Pachter, it is unlikely to create the sort of franchises that make PS3 and Xbox 360 games so profitable.

"Sure, Game Party spawned Game Party 2 and Game Party 3, but is there any question why the sequels didn't do as well?" asks Pachter rhetorically. "Who needs more mini games? It's the same phenomenon as Guitar Hero. Once you have two or three of those games, you have a couple of hundred songs. How many more do you need? The nature of the games that succeed on the Wii don't lend themselves to sequelization and this business is all about creating franchises. Like Madden. Like Halo."

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[Oscarzx n]

There's tons of shovelware on the switch as well. But nobody cares about shovelware when there are good games to play. The wii could go months, if not years without a significant release that was something other than 'preexisting nintendo franchise- now with waggle!'

Since it missed out on essentially every 3rd party game of note that gen, a stable output of exclusives was even more important....and it did not have many.

Shelves full of just dance and cooking mama are hard to overlook if you are missing out on GTA, RDR, Bioshock, Mass effect, dragon age, halo, uncharted, resistance, killzone, forza, dead rising, dead space, final fantasy et al.

Click to shrink...

Many of those games are Sony and Microsoft first party games, and the Wii did get a Dead Space game and some Final Fantasy games too, which are not that great, but neither was XIII so whatever (Dead Rising too, but let's not talk about that).

 

[rdbaaa]

long answer: Wii was a do-over of GameCube in many respects, and nintendo was going "blue ocean" and attempt to get the licensees to understand that, but it probably worked *too* well and so of course you'd get 9999 Party Games or COD Two Years Late Warfare, while Nintendo was left having to add more spice with something like Galaxy 2 or Sin & Punishment 2

short answer: Very few overwrought JRPGs to put on a pedestal

 

[L Thammy]

I think it's a combination of the early Wii having relatively poor offers for the core audience - it got a lot better over time though - as well as outright antipathy to the Wii/DS strategy of trying to reach out to audiences who had traditionally not been marketed to by video games.

 

[Deleted member 13798]

Comparative to the amount of first party releases or genuine quality third party games on the Wii, the shovelware was far more prevalent.

 

[Dolce]

because PS2 and DS both had more support from decent devs. the problem with the Wii wasn't shovelware, it was that the only devs that tried were Nintendo.

 

[Otakunofuji]

Because there was a disproportionate amount of utter lowest common denominator, quick cash in, putrid smelly trash on it? Are you also surprised when people say the Switch has a ton of hot garbage on the eShop compared to the others?

I don't even understand how this thread is all "Cuz gamerz didn't like Nintendo's ultra funky fresh casual Wii, duh!" The Wii literally had more crap games on it than the other systems. This isn't hard.

 

[Speevy]

Also, games are made for how people play games on the hardware.

If most people are buying Wiis and playing for a few months, then leaving it in a closet (Wii Sports), that's exactly the sort of game you're going to get.

 

[MazeHaze]

Anything that involves waving my arms around is shovel ware imo

 

[Foxisdabest]

I loved the Wiis library lol. People were salty because they felt personally threatened by the paradigm shift Nintendo was trying, like it somehow would diminish or change their hobby.

Turns out, to me, the real threat to my hobby was this industry's hard headed chasefor graphical fidelity that turned gaming into endess corridors with no exploration and uninspired worlds.

Thankfully indies showed the industry that there is a lot more games can be rather than cinematic achievements, and they brought me back to this niche

 

[Speevy]

The Wii had some cool games like No More Heroes and Rune Factory Frontier.

You just had to be super plugged in to know about these games, and as others have said, they were super buried at the store.

 

[Jencks]

It was disproportionate. There was just a lot more shovelware on Wii compared to actually good games.

The good games, however, were fantastic. So many interesting and novel ideas come out when the hardware is something out of the box. Kind of miss that stuff.

 

[Dary]

Gamers don't like it when they're not the most important person in the room.

 

[MatildaMuggins]

Because PS2 and DS had the quality to offset it. Especially if you're looking at the Wii library from a 2022 perspective, god damn it's barren! If not for the Mario Galaxy's there'd be next to nothing worth talking about.

Brawl, NSMB Wii, MK Wii, Skyward Sword… These games are barely worth playing in light of newer entries that have made them obsolete or for being kinda mid in terms of quality. Time has NOT been kind to the Wii at all.

 

[Matais92]

I love my Wii but its library of quality games is much smaller than the PS2's

 

[qaopjlll]

Choose one:

Only Wii games or only PS2 games?

Click to shrink...

Wii for sure. PS2 had more "good" 3rd party support but very few games in its library reach the level of all-time classic. The Wii had at least a couple dozen games that I will continue to replay and cherish for as long as I still game. It also had quite a few unheralded 3rd party gems as well, if you knew where to look.

 

[thecaseace]

Choose one:

Only Wii games or only PS2 games?

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Wii games easily. A lot of classics in that library.

It was mostly hated by people who overused the criticism of it producing casual, kiddie games when it actually provided a large amount of pure bangers.

It just didn't fit the desire for gore and dark grey-brown colour palettes that was loved at the time.

 

[blueredandgold]

I would have thought the traditional idea of shovelware was literal shelves full of games nobody knows anything about though, instead of the digital storefront letting just any old thing in, do we still use the term the same way?

During that era when online stores weren't the norm just yet there was a clear distinction between 'these aren't games of note, but you can at least find a review of it somewhere' and 'these are all so obscure nobody is going to care' and you can probably categorise those two by platform.

"Waggle" was the term you could use to typically spot any article or conversation that either classed the Wii as an after-thought or outright sneered at it.

The nascent gaming podcast industry was not having it.

"What is this Eurotrash RPG with the crappy graphics about a guy called Shulk and his giant red sword. Why would anybody want this, it'll never catch on....."

 

[flashman92]

For the record I think the Wii had a strong library that holds up well enough on its own. Popular systems like DS and PS2 also had tons of garbage.

But I think it's because major publishers/developers, including Nintendo, were putting out some pretty low quality trash. Ubisoft is probably the most notorious with the Imaginezzzzz series. And since they are major publishers, stuff like Carnival Games and Petz Monkeys would get front facing shelf space. The issue wasn't the amount, it's the push they were getting.

 

[JuicyPlayer]

It's easier to notice when you have a weaker library with the Wii.

 

[Trike]

Because of the ratio of unplayable trash to good games. PS2 was also the market leader at the time and was constantly getting great games. Wii owners had to get a second console or PC to have something to play in-between Nintendo releases.

 

[Dolce]

Wii for sure. PS2 had more "good" 3rd party support but very few games in its library reach the level of all-time classic. The Wii had at least a couple dozen games that I will continue to replay and cherish for as long as I still game. It also had quite a few unheralded 3rd party gems as well, if you knew where to look.

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i honestly can't think of a console with MORE all time classics, and you can find them among all kinds of genres. some of the best racing games of all time in Gran Turismo 3, 4, Burnout 2 and 3, Wipeout, Outrun 2. FPS games like Unreal Tournament and Timesplitters 2. RPGs like FFX, FFXII, Dragon Quest VIII, Breath of Fire Dragon Quarter, Persona 3, Persona 4, SMT Nocturne, Digital Devil Saga. Games like Grand Theft Auto III, VC, San Andreas. Ico, Shadow of the Colossus. SOCOM. Ace Combat games. Tekken games. Street Fighter games. A bunch of amazing Armored Core games.

And that's just scratching the surface. It had such a wide, diverse amount of games, and had some of the best examples of their genre, period.

 

[TripleBee]

I didn't enjoy using the wii-mote, so even the decent games never felt great to me.

 

[Instro]

The entire library for the Wii outside of Nintendo was practically shovelware. And even Nintendo's own output wasn't particularly outstanding save for a few gems. I don't even know how you ask this question in comparison to the DS, let alone the PS2, which enjoyed immense quality support from all parties.

 

[MADSUPERVILLAIN]

If you went into a games retailer and looked at the Wii shelf, the proportion of shovelware was immense compared to PS2. As a Wii owner with little interest in 1st party Nintendo titles, I had to primarily shop online and even import from the UK to get my hands on a lot of third party games I wanted. Those games simply just weren't on store shelves, it was 20% first party Nintendo, and 80% shovelware.

 

[YellowBara]

A general shift in priorities for Nintendo and the audience they wanted to pursue at the time, and a bad first impression from third party (and some first party) games that were either the actual waggle-fests that people memed to oblivion or minigame collections to get a quick buck.

Left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths even though there were a ton of great, original games on the console too that led to a lot of people not wanting to bother trying stuff that released later on that were more novel, like Red Steel 1 -> Red Steel 2.

On top of that, a lot of publishers genuinely not knowing how to market their games to such a drastically different audience than usual, so a lot of really awesome games were either poorly marketed or barely marketed whatsoever, which led to games flopping and a lot of devs either ditching the console entirely or trying to chase trends rather than make something unique again and risk it bombing. A lot of quality games were just not really known about by all that many people unless you were really keeping an eye on what was coming out.

It doesn't help that a lot of games that bombed on the console, bombed HARD. What happened to Klonoa still makes me so sad to this day.

PS2 also had the luxury of not having as much of a sheer gap in power with competing consoles that the Wii had with the 360 and PS3. PS2 could have AAA releases, budget games, niche games, shovelware garbage, and licensed crap all at once since the smaller power gap made porting/releasing a lot of games less complicated than 360 and PS3 games getting a Wii version. See: Sonic Heroes having the same game on all of the big 3 vs Sonic Unleashed being two different games entirely depending on what it released on as an example.

 

[Chumunga64]

PS2 got every third party franchise on it

the wii did not

 

[Calvinien]

Many of those games are Sony and Microsoft first party games, and the Wii did get a Dead Space game and some Final Fantasy games too, which are not that great, but neither was XIII so whatever (Dead Rising too, but let's not talk about that).

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That was kindof my point. Sony and microsoft were dropping heavy hitting exclusives multiple times a year. After about 3 years the wii stopped having anything resembling a steady hardcore output. The wii got a dead space spin off....which you would only care about if you already played the first dead space. it's a game that requires you to own another console ecosystem in order to be relevant.