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Nintendo Life: The Wii U eShop is raising tough questions on quality control....

maxcriden

Member
Alternate title: shovelware-ing out its welcome?

--

I thought this was an interesting article and a bit harsh in places but only in a fair way, really. It seems like the release of the dreadful The Letter has indicated a new nadir for games Nintendo is willing to have released on the eShop.

Some choice excerpts:

Yet that's the topic we're raising here, and one that we'll assess with developers in the weeks to come. The question is simple: is the Wii U eShop platform now too accessible? Is Nintendo's desire for content on its stores, and its laudable efforts to enable developers with the tools and support they need, bringing us a negative flipside of titles arriving on the store that shouldn't be there, games that aren't good enough for a home console experience? This very topic is contentious, we're aware, but we also like to think that our efforts in covering the download sector for many years entitles us to tackle it fairly.

We'll be giving developers of various sizes and status to pitch in on the topic, but let's outline the core issue at hand to kick off the debate within the community. What level of quality is acceptable for a game on a Nintendo home console? Where do we draw the line between applauding plucky developers and questioning their place on the hardware? Should the eShop have standards of 'premium' content, or be open to all games, allowing consumers to ultimately decide?

In general a number of games through this framework have been decent, functional efforts that, in the eyes of our review team at least, have been worthy of middling scores and cautious recommendations — better examples include I've Got to Run! and GEOM. If they cost less than a cup of coffee and provide up to an hour or more of decent entertainment, they arguably hit the mark, though recent weeks have perhaps brought cause for hesitation. We were critical of performance lag in Internal Invasion, for which the Framework platform itself was partially blamed in responses to our review, we slammed BrickBlastU!, and recently awarded a rare 1/10 to The Letter, which has done much to prompt this editorial. The latter can be beaten in under 10 minutes and, frankly, shouldn't be on a home console platform.

We do feel that the eShop is in a peculiar place, however, with a range of these inexpensive, low-budget products arriving in North America, particularly; Europe's ratings and localisation requirements have been beyond the scope, so far, for some of the latest generation of newcomers on the store. On the one hand we applaud Nintendo for providing opportunities to those that have never released a game before, or are doing so on a shoestring budget, yet on the other hand wonder whether some titles should actually be on an equal footing with larger, established download developers who's games are, to be blunt, in an entirely different league. From a business perspective, Nintendo must also consider whether the eShop could better present content to put its best foot forward, or whether it should actually be picky in what titles it invites on board, or at least those given significant shelf space. The platform lives and dies, remember, on the quality of its content and how it presents itself to consumers

A lot more at the link, and I recommend reading the full article:

http://www.nintendolife.com/news/20...is_raising_tough_questions_on_quality_control

So, what do you think? Should Nintendo be better curating/promoting, even rejecting certain content on the shop? I know we have plenty of indie developers on this site who have games on or coming to the eShop, and I'm wondering what their take on this is, as well.

Reject this thread if old.
 
I'm more concerned about the state of the Virtual Console.

With the amount of reviews and resources available, buying shovelware/poor games is your own fault.
 

Sendou

Member
Next to everything should be allowed to be sold on the store but obviously there's no reason why every game released should get a spot on the main page.

Customers just have to show some responsibility with cases like The Letter. There is no quality control tight enough to stop games absolutely not worth money coming to the store. The whole idea that platform owner should defend customers from bad games is just stupid.
 

GulAtiCa

Member
Trying to limit who can create games, would be a bad idea IMO. If they made it so you couldn't release a game without making a game beforehand, then I would never have had the chance to create a game and release it already on the Wii U.

Creating a sub-cat for games for the NWF program would be a bad idea too (if only shown there), as would limit the game's exposure.

I do feel some games should have spent more time in development. And this does include myself. I had a few lotcheck delays, where I could have improved it some more. Hard at work now improving my game post-launch, but a good bit of this could have been done in the few months waiting for release..

Btw: Releasing a game doesn't mean you will get a spot on the home page. My game didn't. The Letter (which prompted this article (I have no opinion on that game since I haven't played it other then it apparently being short.)) didn't, and that game is charting it seems. The game being deemed good would likely be exposed more.
 
I see their point, but not too long ago NOA denied NA from retail games such as Disaster Days of Crisis and other games that weren't "up to par". Heck we almost didn't even get Xenoblade because of NOA. I say if it's not a broken mess they should be released and let people decide what is shovelware and what isn't. This is what reviews and trailers are for.
 
Yeah, Nintendo made some strides to make it easier to become an indie dev on Nintendo platforms. ..but they made it too easy. Things like the letter shouldn't be on there, but i guess they don't want to reject games less they accidentally reject something like mutant mudds, super meat boy, mine craft etc
 

Platy

Member
Nintendo needs all the games they can get.... even if this means some stuff like The Letter appears once in a while
 

maxcriden

Member
I'm more concerned about the state of the Virtual Console.

With the amount of reviews and resources available, buying shovelware/poor games is your own fault.

Yeah, the VC is in incredibly rough shape compared to what it was on the Wii. If we couldn't access the Wii Shop through the Wii U it'd be considerably worse, even. It just seems like it's become a non-priority for Nintendo compared to other stuff. At this point I will be really surprised if we ever get N64 games on there (and to think not that long ago I still thought we might get GCN games).

Btw: Releasing a game doesn't mean you will get a spot on the home page. My game didn't. The Letter (which prompted this article (I have no opinion on that game since I haven't played it other then it apparently being short.)) didn't, and that game is charting it seems. The game being deemed good would likely be exposed more.

Glad to see your take on this, I was hoping you'd see this thread. BTW, I think I saw The Letter featured on Wara Wara Plaza the other day....
 
Should Nintendo be better curating/promoting, even rejecting certain content on the shop?.

Rejecting no, but hiding shovelwares and promoting only the best titles yes.

We already seen this happen on the 3DS eShop. For its first year it was an eldorado of small downloadable gems, now it is flooded with tons of crap...
 

Sendou

Member
Isn't there also a debate about this very same topic but for Steam?

What are people's thoughts on that?

It's just what Valve is going to do (and has been doing for a while now) which is opening Steam up for pretty much everyone and minimizing their gatekeeper role. You might argue that this is a bad thing but it is what they're doing.
 

axisofweevils

Holy crap! Today's real megaton is that more than two people can have the same first name.
You can't have it both ways.
With the Wii, Nintendo implemented a minimum sales figure to try and stop shovelware.
With the Wii U, there's far fewer hurdles to jump through. Unfortunately, that means that anyone and his dog can get their game up on the eShop.
 
It's hard to say. While some games really aren't very good, it's true, I don't really like the idea of putting them in a corner somewhere to die, let alone outright rejecting them. The accessibility is what lets smaller devs get on a console when they otherwise might not be able to.

There's definitely a question here as to the front page, how it's curated and how things rise to the top, but I think the accessibility for fledgling devs is a good thing.
 

GulAtiCa

Member
There is hardly anything being released any given week so it really hasn't been an issue.

Did you miss July 3rd? Had 6 indie games, 2 of which were high profile (Guacamelee, Armillo)

Edit: Why 6 games you might ask? Well Nintendo did a poor job telling us that that date might be busy..
 

SerTapTap

Member
Wiiware was full of crap when Nintendo had awful policies. PS2 had loads of sholveware without self publishing of any kind. QA is great, but having an arbitrarily restrictive platform is far from actually assuring your games are good. Also they rejected Binding of Isaac, so they're clearly paying attention. They just have...erm...particular gripes.
 
I'm more concerned about the state of the Virtual Console.

With the amount of reviews and resources available, buying shovelware/poor games is your own fault.

Agreed. It's downright awful compared to how the original Wii Virtual Console looked in the same amount of time. It's at least tolerable in Europe, and downright great in Japan, but in North America... I just don't understand why Nintendo would intentionally deny their biggest market so many classic games. Did we ever even get Super Mario Kart? Where are the Square-Enix releases that Japan has been getting? What about Turbographx? Sega Genesis?

Sorry for the rant, and I don't want to derail this thread, but Nintendo has mismanaged the shop in many more egregious ways than just allowing the occasional piece of crap through. In fact, all digital store fronts can be accused of that just as much as Nintendo can, really. The argument seems pointless to me.
 
Everyone who has a smart phone has access to piece of shit, 99 cent, shovelware apps. Ye ain't need a home console for that, least of all when Nintendo is sitting on the motherload of N64 and Gamecube titles to put on eShop to gain legitimate sales and interest in their system.
 
I see their point, but not too long ago NOA denied NA from retail games such as Disaster Days of Crisis and other games that weren't "up to par". Heck we almost didn't even get Xenoblade because of NOA. I say if it's not a broken mess they should be released and let people decide what is shovelware and what isn't. This is what reviews and trailers are for.

NOA is a fucking mess, what else is new ?
 

GulAtiCa

Member
Glad to see your take on this, I was hoping you'd see this thread. BTW, I think I saw The Letter featured on Wara Wara Plaza the other day....

I think the reason The Letter is doing so well recently is likely do to the extreme bad exposure. the "it's so bad it's good". Someone in the Nintendo Downloads thread even said that. So it seems like a decent amount of people are buying it. It has been charting quite a bit from what I've seen.

I'm trying my best to keep my opinion of the game neutral, esp as I haven't actually played it.
 
Yeah, the VC is in incredibly rough shape compared to what it was on the Wii. If we couldn't access the Wii Shop through the Wii U it'd be considerably worse, even. It just seems like it's become a non-priority for Nintendo compared to other stuff. At this point I will be really surprised if we ever get N64 games on there (and to think not that long ago I still thought we might get GCN games).



Glad to see your take on this, I was hoping you'd see this thread. BTW, I think I saw The Letter featured on Wara Wara Plaza the other day....
I think its pretty telling when the Wii U Virtual Console might hit 100 titles by the end of July. Especially when there is about 400 on the Wii

The way Wara Wara plaza is designed tends to promote new releases and games that have been selling well recently. The Letter released in a week pretty much all by itself so it was pretty likely to get a spot on Wara Wara Plaza
 

The Boat

Member
Nintendo has strict quality control, but that doesn't mean the games are good, just that they work well and don't crash the console all the time. Limiting releases to good games, is ridiculously stupid, especially considering what makes a good game is very subjective and even more when the console has no AAA third party support.
 
Isn't there also a debate about this very same topic but for Steam?

What are people's thoughts on that?

Steam seems like a different case, as there's a greater potential of harmful software being distributed through it.

The Wii U's OS is closed one, but is there any similar threat? I'm not really well-versed on how "closed" consoles fare for safety against malware, outside of quality control.

I mean look at Steam. It's filled to the brim with garbage. Is that an issue?

Yes, it is.
 

Artorias

Banned
Lol, what a useless article. There have been bad games before, and there will be bad games in the future. The libraries of most consoles are probably close to 70% games I'd never touch in my life, 10% awesome shit, and the rest is somewhere in the middle.

I'm not trying to defend The Letter or any other shitty game, but there is literally no reason to try to restrict shitty games. It would very likely make problems for smaller devs, indies with 2D graphics and anyone trying to make something unique.

I mean look at Steam. It's filled to the brim with garbage. Is that an issue?
 

SerTapTap

Member
NOA is a fucking mess, what else is new ?

Most of these self-published games are western, so if they went through anyone I'd assume it'd be NOA. I'd rather NOA not call the shots on...almost anything honestly. I'd merrily sort through crap, especially the current level (which is NOTHING compared to mobile, or even Steam) than deal with classic SNES era NOA style censorship/dev bullying.
 

SummitAve

Banned
Did you miss July 3rd? Had 6 indie games, 2 of which were high profile (Guacamelee, Armillo)

Edit: Why 6 games you might ask? Well Nintendo did a poor job telling us that that date might be busy..

6 games is a lot? That's barely scrolling territory.
 

Pociask

Member
Next to everything should be allowed to be sold on the store but obviously there's no reason why every game released should get a spot on the main page.

Customers just have to show some responsibility with cases like The Letter. There is no quality control tight enough to stop games absolutely not worth money coming to the store. The whole idea that platform owner should defend customers from bad games is just stupid.

I don't know if I agree with you. I see your point, which is a strong one. But on the other hand, isn't there an idea that a storekeeper should stand behind his products? I realize that may seem old-fashioned in the ear of big box stores and digital golaths, but I think it's still something floating in the collective unconscious (I'll readily concede that "Buyer beware" has a similar if not greater hold). If Nintendo is offering a game for sale, there's perhaps an implicit guarantee that Nintendo thinks this game is worthy of your dollar - they are profiting from the transaction, after all. I don't know if we should let any company, including Nintendo, off the hook for profiting from selling customers a product they know is junk. Sure, the customer shouldn't have bought the snake oil, they should have known better - but we still don't approve the selling of snake oil.

Quick edit: NOA didn't choose to not release Disaster! because it wasn't "up to par." NOA has discretion in selecting which non-tentpole-Nintendo titles it will release for physical sale in North America - a decision that includes potential translation costs, definite distribution costs, and definite marketing costs, not to mention opportunity costs. I thought it was dumb then, and still do, for Nintendo to pass on Disaster when they needed a steady stream of software, but they weren't censoring a third-party game for release on their digital storefront that was presented to them ready-for-sale. There's no reason to compare Disaster with NOA being able to say, "No, this game is straight up terrible, we'd feel bad taking money from people for this game." That's what store owners do.
 

CLaddyOnFire

Neo Member
As with a lot of other people here, I'm of the mindset that if you want to buy something on the eShop, it's your responsibility to know enough about it to warrant spending money. Just because it's there, doesn't mean that it's good (which is true for everything, not just video games).

My only gripe with the eShop is that browsing it is less intuitive than I'd like. It seems hard to just sit there browse mindlessly for games if you don't have something in mind that you're looking for
 

Oersted

Member
Like others said, shovelware was always there, once PS2 and Wii, now iOS/ Android and "even" Steam. They ain't such a problem. Offensively racist/ sexist and scammy products are. But this isn't exclusive to shovelware.
 

Somnid

Member
While it might not have fan merit we know what makes more money and what people gravitate toward, less curation. App Store games might range from good to abysmal with far more on the latter end but it's not really the platform's job to limit it. It is however the store's job to highlight the worthwhile entries and make them visible.
 
Steam seems like a different case, as there's a greater potential of harmful software being distributed through it.

The Wii U's OS is closed one, but is there any similar threat? I'm not really well-versed on how "closed" consoles fare for safety against malware, outside of quality control.

That was actually gonna be my next question.

Is there any possibility considering how easy it is to put an indie game up on the Wii U, that someone can make a game with some kind of virus where if you download it, there is an almost untraceable bug that can account your Nintendo account with your credit information or whatever?
 

GulAtiCa

Member
One thing I've noticed is a lot of these new developers really need to take criticism better. Developers need to realize that honest criticism is good. It can help you fix your current issues, problems with your game as well as future games. I don't mean bugs, but like design issues. I myself try my best to take in these criticism, I welcome them. But I've noticed several recent devs get over-critical on their bad reviews. Esp get over-defensive and fight with the reviewer.

Obviously not an issue unique to new developers, as AAA developers and even popular developers have this issue too.

That was actually gonna be my next question.

Is there any possibility considering how easy it is to put an indie game up on the Wii U, that someone can make a game with some kind of virus where if you download it, there is an almost untraceable bug that can account your Nintendo account with your credit information or whatever?
No, not really. Nintendo has STRICT guidelines to adhere to. Their lotcheck is extensive in checking out your game to make sure it runs correctly (not plays correctly, runs correctly)

6 games is a lot? That's barely scrolling territory.
What other console/handheld platforms (so not PC/iOS/etc) have more then 6 digital-only releases a week?
 
Nintendo is distancing itself from the WiiWare past of dictating the prices, dictating when the game would come out (to some extent they still do as lot check still exists but once that is over the developer is free) and trying to force quality by only paying developers once they sold enough copies which only served to completely deter developers from the service as hardly anyone put their Wiis online.

Everyone having a go is a consequence of this but if it leads to more and better content being on the eShop the service will be stronger as a whole. It is the open and inclusive image they are gunning for that I mentioned in the opening (sadly, gagging their main eShop guy from Twitter possibly because he said something negative about region locking is not helping this open appearance).

Much like XNA this might lead to a treasure trove of hidden gems but there is yet to be enough of a flood for people to be lucky dipping in this regard.

Glad to see your take on this, I was hoping you'd see this thread. BTW, I think I saw The Letter featured on Wara Wara Plaza the other day....
Is there any mention of what determines games that appear there? (the eShop 3DS manual does have info of what is "recent" in recent charts so a Wii U manual might have similar info). I would imagine miiverse activity weighted by time from release is part of it (so talked about new releases will appear there as well as mega popular older games).
 

jooey

The Motorcycle That Wouldn't Slow Down
Wii U is a drop in the bucket compared to the cavalcade of horseshit on WiiWare, DSiWare and 3DS since those launched. Where was the concern about those?
 

sakipon

Member
I'm not trying to defend The Letter or any other shitty game, but there is literally no reason to try to restrict shitty games. It would very likely make problems for smaller devs, indies with 2D graphics and anyone trying to make something unique.

I disagree. I've been thinking about this ever since I downloaded demos from the Xbox Indie category. I think it's more than okay to deny developers from releasing on a home console. I don't want these stores to become the same kind of mess Google Play is, where you have a high chance to download a stinker or a deceiving app unless you truly know the product beforehand. Steam is different, PC has always been known as the open, unrestricted platform. Now mobile has the same fame. I would be against full censorship but since shitty games already have a place, they don't need to be on consoles aswell.

I am happy about any indie game that is done with care though.
 

maxcriden

Member
I think the reason The Letter is doing so well recently is likely do to the extreme bad exposure. the "it's so bad it's good". Someone in the Nintendo Downloads thread even said that. So it seems like a decent amount of people are buying it. It has been charting quite a bit from what I've seen.

I'm trying my best to keep my opinion of the game neutral, esp as I haven't actually played it.

Man, people have too much time and money if they want to play a game they expect to be bad. (Maybe I'm saying this with a smidge of envy, though, since I'd like to have more time to play games.)

I think its pretty telling when the Wii U Virtual Console might hit 100 titles by the end of July. Especially when there is about 400 on the Wii

The way Wara Wara plaza is designed tends to promote new releases and games that have been selling well recently. The Letter released in a week pretty much all by itself so it was pretty likely to get a spot on Wara Wara Plaza

Yeah, that's really nuts about the VC. I'm hoping the continued GBA and upcoming DS releases improve it a bit.
 

SerTapTap

Member
That was actually gonna be my next question.

Is there any possibility considering how easy it is to put an indie game up on the Wii U, that someone can make a game with some kind of virus where if you download it, there is an almost untraceable bug that can account your Nintendo account with your credit information or whatever?

At the bare minimum the malware would have to break out of the sandbox as completely as those Wii hacks. Even then, worst case is probably a keylogger. CC info is surely stored on sever not console, and local password-based auth prevents auto-purchases.

I don't see why people would bother anyway. Unlike PC, very few people are doing anything super private and valuable to snoop on with their consoles.
 
Pretty much this. I find the article pretty odd to be honest.
It is a discussion point. At least it relevant to the industry as a whole and is not like last weeks rather poorly thought out; EVERYONE I've figured out HOW TO SAVE NINTENDO. The GamePad is like a TABLET KILLER, you can use netlfix and browse shit on it all in your living room, this is crate.
 

JoeM86

Member
Agreed. It's downright awful compared to how the original Wii Virtual Console looked in the same amount of time. It's at least tolerable in Europe, and downright great in Japan, but in North America... I just don't understand why Nintendo would intentionally deny their biggest market so many classic games. Did we ever even get Super Mario Kart? Where are the Square-Enix releases that Japan has been getting? What about Turbographx? Sega Genesis?

Sorry for the rant, and I don't want to derail this thread, but Nintendo has mismanaged the shop in many more egregious ways than just allowing the occasional piece of crap through. In fact, all digital store fronts can be accused of that just as much as Nintendo can, really. The argument seems pointless to me.

To be fair, much of the Virtual Console issues are because of third parties. From what I understand, they need to decide and release the titles, not Nintendo. That's why there's little third party releases on the Wii U VC outside of Capcom, some Konami and Namco.

Seems they were all for it when the Wii was successful, but now the Wii U is struggling, they don't want to put in the effort
 

Fireblend

Banned
I'm 100% against rejecting games for any reason. As long as they're not malicious, don't have game breaking bugs and can be completed (i.e. they're complete products), I'm all for as much content as there can be. The community and the eShop admins can filter and feature the content themselves, like in Google Play or Steam. But rejecting game because they're not "worthy" of being a "console experience" (wtf does that even means) sounds ridiculous to me.
 

gblues

Banned
Nintendo Quality control has 2 jobs:

- Make sure the app/game doesn't harm the console or do anything shady with customer data.
- Make sure the game implements the bare necessity of features for the platform (e.g. save/load mechanics, epilepsy warnings, blah blah).

After that, the eShop has the responsibility to make sure that only stuff that sells well gets put on the "front shelves" so to speak. This can be driven based on sales figures, professional reviews, and user reviews.

It would be nice if the eShop also provided a peer-review system a la Amazon. However, also like Amazon, you'd need people curating the reviews--at the very least, watching for spoilers and responding to revenge-reviews.

But ultimately, it's the buyer's job to at least look for a review (and if you can't find one, that's a big red flag by itself). Every platform has had shovelware.
 
Wiiware was full of crap when Nintendo had awful policies.

Yeah, I think people are forgetting how woeful the general standard of WiiWare and DSiWare was. Nintendo demanding developers jump though all sorts of hoops didn't result in them getting only the finest content, it just resulted in them being overrun with shovelware from soulless publishers.

I think there's still room for Nintendo to tweak their policies (there's some games on there that really shouldn't be on there), but I think they're a lot closer to the sweet spot now than they were last generation.
 

foxuzamaki

Doesn't read OPs, especially not his own
I saw the letter on miiverse so I went into the community to see what it was about, the game looks like trash and the posts were talking about how awful it was and if they can tell nintendo how bad it is.
 
I'm confused by what authority NintendoLife can argue that a game has no place existing on a console. (This is the same outlet that gave Witch and Hero a 4/10, despite being one of the most inventive Tower Defense games out there.)

The answer to quality control isn't limiting who can publish on your platform, (there are plenty of one-man teams creating fun, interesting concepts that a totally worth the $1-$5 asking price) you let your customers vote with their wallet. The good stuff typically sells well enough to make money (Unepic, Two Tribes stuff, etc) while low quality stuff doesn't.

It comes with the territory when you can easily self publish a game for a few hundred dollars.
 
As someone who owns both a EU and a US Wii U, it seems like NoE is especially good at this, whereas NoA usually focuses on the more high profile games.

I took a pic of NoE's eShop front page:
Well considering the costs of coming to Europe you don't so much of the lower profile Indie Games even coming out. I think that does help.

This does make me wonder if the woeful VC releases are to give indies breathing room (no indie stands a chance if Super Mario Kart is uot that week)). I remember in the WiiWare years people conspired this was the case rather than the well running dry but the differences between NOA and the rest seem like the drops are being held back on purpose.
 
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