Iimage from IGN.com. The game is Destineer's hit sports game, Winter Sports: The Ultimate Challenge

IGN.com reviewed yet another Destineer published game, in this case Kawasaki Jet Ski. It scored a laughable 2 out of 10, but I'm pretty sure that isn't the worst Destineer/Conspiracy published shovelware title out there.

So what's the deal with this slew of shovelware? Shouldn't Nintendo be filtering this crap out?

In a word, no.

Rejecting these el cheapo games for Wii would be a mistake. Nintendo is smart, believe it or not, for letting these things pass through the filter. Yes, yes, I know that seems insane. Let's consider the arguments:

"Hey Rob, doesn't these games undermine third party support on Wii? This isn't what we had in mind when we wanted to get third party support for a Nintendo system!"

Response:

Nintendo is strategically aiming right at the major publishers with their tolerance towards Destineer and Conspiracy Entertainment. To be blunt, third parties were slow to adopt for Wii. Industry insiders, that is, people I've actually spoken to in person, honestly believe that EA, Activision, and other big boys "bet" on Microsoft or Sony and left Nintendo for dead. Only Ubisoft showed strong early support (at least amont Western developers) early and they were rewarded with big sales. And guess what? So have the shoverware guys. Most of these titles were duds, but they were cheaply made, and a few hits have been scored. Most recently, in fact, Destineer hit it big with their Winter Sports title called "Winter Sports: The Ultimate Challenge."

The reason that title sold well is because it filled a niche: virtually no winter sports games were released on Wii by any other third party this year! Plus, last year's excellent but very hard SSX Blur was a non-starter on Wii. Hence you had a gaping hole in the market.

So, Nintendo allows these also ran companies to cash in simply because nobody else is! It is if they are saying, "hey look, these guys are selling decent units on our system with basically nothing, so what's your problem?"

"But isn't this what happened to Atari? Aren't they helping the industry crash?"

This is an easy argument to dismantle because there are fundamental differences between what happened to Atari and what is going on now. Yes, tons of shovelware dominated the Atari 2600 which helped lead to the big industry crash of 1983/84 (but it wasn't the only factor, another thing people don't realize when thinking about the "crash"). But it was shovelware priced at full retail, which back then was something like $40-50. The Wii shovelware comes out at $20, far below typical prices, even for budget games. The most expensive title on the shovelware docket is the Winter Sports game, which is priced at $30, but that happens to be the best game of the lot!

"What happened to the Seal of Quality? Shouldn't Nintendo go back to that?"

No. The Seal in fact alienated developers and is of no use today. It was important to Nintendo then beacuse of the image of videogames created by the crash. But this is not a problem now. Consumers do not need the Big N to tell them what is good or bad. They can read the enormous amounts of literature and internet content and decide for themselves what to buy.

We all want the best games for our platforms. But "the little guys" have a right to exist, and I'm glad Nintendo is not squashing them. For all the bad games this policy may produce, I'd bet we are going to see more and more hidden gems like Winter Sports as well.

Read IGN.com's review of Winter Sports: The Ultimate Challenge