In case you’ve forgotten about the piles of crap games for PS2 by it’s being the most popular system last-generation (edit – it’s easy to remember the great ones), Game|Life kindly reminds us that shovelware is a good thing.
A quick glance at the shelves at any game retailer will reveal a host of slapdash B-games, churned out by publishers you’ve never heard of to make a quick buck off Wii’s success. You of course should not buy any of these games. And you shouldn’t let your friends buy them, either, unless you hate your friends. But just because Nintendo allows these publishers to crank out garbage games for Wii doesn’t mean they’re bad people. In fact, it’s a very healthy attitude to take towards a maturing market, one that could reap dividends for gamers in the long run.
Indeed, the existence of shovelware and inferior quality games actually says: “This thing is thriving. Let’s throw everything we can at it, even the crap.” With said growth and popularity comes an influx of games, both good and bad. As Chris Kohler writes, the $2 DVD dump bin at Walgreens “doesn’t stop anybody from buying the films they really want to see.”
And you thought rank content was alarming. It’s normal.