When you go to a game store how often do you find yourself looking at various Wii and DS titles and wondering if you should buy them? There are numerous games released every week for every system and it really is a hard choice to pick up a game you know nothing about. Some even have very alluring box art and sometimes false promises of greatness, but you just aren’t really sure what to get out of fear of wasting your money on some type of shovel-ware garbage.
I honestly find myself doing this little dance a lot as of late. This is because when I usually go to a game store to buy some games with some spare cash, I like to blindly dive into one hoping to find something good to play. Like taking that chance and picking up an obscure title like Disgaea that might be actually be good.
As a person who loves to play DS and Wii games I find this to be a serious problem. Out of all the systems out on the market I find myself having to check the back of more Wii and DS boxes than that of any Sony or Microsoft game. Not because the PS3 or Xbox360 has less games than Nintendo, but because Nintendo’s consoles have a over abundance of cheap third party titles that are drowning out anything that might be noticeably good.
Is this hurting the game industry? Probably not at all, since most gamers who have been playing for a few years follow certain series and certain companies. Would you buy a “Real Arcade” game over a “Capcom” game? Not likely.
However, the real problem I see with this is that if you were a new company just trying to jump into the market with your games. Releasing them as a third party game for Nintendo, how would it actually do on the market? How would they distinguish themselves from the constant tidal waves of shovel-ware that is being released? It would probably be really hard for them.
I ponder why companies like Ubisoft release titles like Catz, Dogz, Imagine: Baby Sitter, and other such games like this. In all honesty it’s good to see that the Nintendo’s Seal of Quality doing it’s job, printing them money in cart sales for these games. While locking out hard working developers like Bob, and publishing more “Ninja Bread Men” than we can shack a WiiMote at.
