Nintendo's Shovelware Conundrum

Of all the Nintendo consoles I own, I have the most-intimate connection with the Wii. It debuted in 2006, right smack in the middle of my teenage years, so I have vivid memories of using it. It also came out between being old enough to have to purchase each game by myself and not being old enough to actually have a job, so I often found myself saving up to purchase the console’s heftily-priced games. To-date, I have more games for my Wii than any other gaming console I own combined, which makes sense when you factor in the aforementioned.

Of course, the Wii was notorious for having a crap-ton of shovelware. Which begs the question: why did Nintendo’s most-popular console at the time have so much garbage on it?

Firstly, what’s shovelware? As the name suggests, it’s content that’s shovelled onto a video game console at the last second. It’s cheap, it’s often rushed, and it’s usually created to make a quick buck. The Wii isn’t the only console burdened by shovelware, the PS2 had more of it than I can even begin to name, but it became notorious for being the 7th Gen console with the largest quantity of it.

The Wii, therefore, became synonymous with “owning a shovelware machine”. Wii owners were expected to “deal with it”, and it got so infuriating that I, in a now-deleted ScrewAttack collaboration with a fellow g1, discussed why it bothered me in greater detail. But looking back, almost 13 years after its launch, that the Wii became synonymous with shovelware still bugs me. Why throw garbage onto the Wii? I think the answer can be boiled down to two reasons, both unavoidable.

The first has to do with the system’s popularity. Nintendo had long tried being the biggest and most-powerful console since the days of the NES, and they held that title, albeit with difficulty, come the SNES. Yet with the advent of the PS1 and its disc-based format, Nintendo found themselves in a catch-22: should they opts for discs, which were flimsy, and have fewer size restrictions, or should they stick with what was reliable, cartridges, and risk losing space? Ultimately, the N64 went with the latter. And while the console had stellar first and second-party games, as well as a clear graphical advantage, in the end Nintendo suffered immensely in the third-party division and trailed behind the PS1.

The Gamecube didn’t fare much better. The N64 might’ve not pulled in the PS1’s sales numbers, but it didn’t have much other competition. The Gamecube, however, had to compete with the PS2 and Microsoft’s Xbox console, and both knew the market far-better than they could’ve predicted. Factor in that the Gamecube lacked true online support, and that its smaller discs were harder to code for than the competition, and Nintendo quickly found themselves on life-support by the end of the Gamecube’s run. To-date, it remains one of Nintendo’s least-popular consoles, with many of its best titles, again, being first and second-party offerings.

It’s no surprise, therefore, that Nintendo opted to focus on a different demographic with the Wii: the non-gamer (or “casual gamer”). Nintendo realized there was a goldmine to be had in catering to grandpa and grandma, so they started making interactivity and exercise their focus. No longer were games about difficulty and skill, they were now about using your hands and feet. And it worked, with Nintendo pulling in a market not normally-associated with video games.

So yes, the Wii was incredibly-popular. Yet because of that, many developers figured they’d cash-in and toss their unfinished products onto the system. Party games, cheap sports games and hacky-ports were the norm for the Wii, to its detriment. Even today, it’s hard to traverse a bargain-bin in a toy store and not see several dozen Wii titles, mostly shovelware, lying there at a reduced price. Because why bother putting in effort?

This leads to the other reason, that being demographics. Remember how I said that the Wii targeted grandpa and grandma? Well, many developers figured that they were going senile, so they couldn’t differentiate between quality and garbage. Again, why try when the target audience didn’t know better? Who really cared?

These two reasons seemed to be the underlying drives behind the Wii’s shovelware. Sure, you had great titles from Nintendo, like your Zeldas, Marios, Smash Bros. and Metroids, as well as some great titles from third-party developers who actually cared, like Capcom, but for every Super Mario Galaxy, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaro’s Treasure and decent port of Okami, there were dozens upon dozens of mediocre-to-awful games without much care. Some of them, like The Conduit and Red Steel, were even legitimate attempts to utilize the console’s prowess that were also rushed and unfinished.

Ultimately, the Wii became known by gamers as “the baby’s bargain-bin console”, and this upset me. Because while the Wii had lots of shovelware, perhaps more than I could stomach, it also had lots of really solid games. Like I said before, I currently own more Wii games than games on any other console. I may have had to do a lot of digging to find them, but the gems existed!

Looking back now, however, it bugs me even more because of how predatory the shovelware was. Don’t have time for a good game? Want to port over something from a decade earlier and not try? Why not put it on the most-popular console? You’ll make a quick buck and dupe consumers anyway, so who cares?

I do. I care because it hurts the Wii, and I care because it crowds out legit titles. But I also care because you’re taking advantage of an audience who may not know better. And while they might not know all of the ins-and-outs like regular gamers, they’re not stupid. Treating them that way only reflects badly on you, not them!

I won’t pretend that a party game automatically qualifies as shovelware. Some of my favourite Nintendo franchises, like Smash Bros., are party games too, and they’re excellent! But the reason they work is because they’re made out of love. They’re not put together for a quick buck, which is what many shovelware games are. And isn’t that better in the long-run?