Wheat from the Chaff – The Wii’s Shovelware Epidemic

The Wii has received almost unprecedented level of mainstream success; fifty million of the white boxes have shipped worldwide and they fly off shelves faster than their more powerful rivals at an alarming rate.

But such great success does not come without repercussions; in the console space, the Wii has become the prime candidate for low budget developers to make a quick buck and for mildly-successful last-gen games to see a new lease of life with little effort during the transition.

The last console to see such incredible success was the Playstation 2, but as all of its top selling games share a level of maturity and a massive budget, such as Final Fantasy, Grand Theft Auto and Metal Gear Solid, there was little opportunity for shoddy titles and quick cash-ins.

This time, however, the top selling games are Wii Sports and Wii Play, brand synergetic Olympics and games with fun, family, carnival and party in the title. In 2008, the 10th best selling game in the UK was Carnival Games; holding its own alongside massive brands like FIFA, Grand Theft Auto and LEGO. The audience has indentified itself as wanting cheap thrills, an abundance of minigames and social interaction – quality product not necessarily required.

When considering a console’s entire library, the Wii’s ratio of quality is worryingly out of balance. According to Metacritic’s aggregation of review scores, the average score of a Wii game is 62 out of 100. The Xbox 360 and PS2 share 68 and the PS3’s diminutive software library stands tall at 71.

Even more troubling however, is looking at what proportion of the available titles is deemed unworthy of a purchase.

Bear in mind this does not include games deemed unreviewable by publications, or from publishers who can’t present Amazon with a proper box image, let alone give Eurogamer a review copy. Games such as Mr Bean’s Wacky World of Wii, Bratz Kidz Party and Alan Hansen Sports Challenge are three of many missing titles from Metacritic’s database.

This discomforting lack of quality titles is the polar opposite of other consoles on the market. The percentage of games deemed fantastic on Wii and receiving review scores of 80 to 100 (11%) is almost exactly the same as Xbox 360 games that are awful or mediocre and given review scores of 0 to 50 (12%). The opposite is true as well; the games marked as worthless on Wii (21%) match to the number of excellent games on Xbox 360 (22%).

But does it matter? Surely even less-than-savvy consumers can sniff out poor quality games?

Considering the top ten selling third party titles, only four games have received positive reviews. Another four have received average/medium scores and a shocking two games have received what Metacritic describes as “generally negative reviews”.

Until this point in the article, reviews have been used to condemn the Wii and label it as a home for substandard games. From the sales, game reviews for Wii games have proved entirely ineffective, but are they even accurate?

Game reviewers have an inherent bias; a huge number of critics who send their scores to Metacritic are males in their 20s and 30s. Having taken up the position for their love of videogames and earning years of experience reviewing traditional videogames, being presented with Deca Sports is an unwelcome change. No matter how enjoyable a few games of Carnival Games can be, how can they score anywhere near the 50 million dollar Grand Theft Auto IV or the Hollywood actor voiced Fallout 3 and Call of Duty: World at War? While movie reviewers are conditioned to placing art house flicks, summer blockbusters and kids movies on the same scoring system, game critics certainly are not used to such a disparity in content.

How do these review scores match actual customer satisfaction? Game Party, which received a dreadful 25/100 review score aggregation at Metacritic (based on 8 professional critiques), gets a far more respectable 3 stars at Amazon’s customer review section (based on 128 customer reviews). Carnival Games was given a Metacritic score of 56, while Amazon user reviews scored it 4 stars; placing it, in terms of user satisfaction, alongside Grand Theft Auto IV and the Gears of War sequel.

Midway’s Game Party sold 2 Million Copies, but received a Metacritic Score of 25.

In fact, 48% of customers would recommend the abysmally rated Game Party (rating it 4 or 5 stars), and 71% sing Carnival Games’ praises.

While shelves are still stacked with Wii shovelware and lacklustre ports, the gaming press still needs to rethink the way they handle this new breed of game, or revaluate if it’s even worth the effort trying.