Wii's dirty secret: A dearth of good games

The Nintendo Wii remains the hottest selling console on the market, having shipped over 24 million units since its launch in November 2006. That's nearly double the PS3 and 5 million more than the Xbox 360, though the Xbox has been on the market for twice as long.

But behind the success of the Wii lies a dirty secret, says GameFunk: That very few quality games are being made for the console. In fact, if you look at the aggregate reviews, most of the games suck. Sure, Wii has some standout titles (Super Mario Galaxy is a classic, one of my favorite games in recent years), but most of the great games have come from Nintendo itself, not from third-party developers.

GameFunk's chart (scroll down a bit) is telling: According to GameRankings' reviews (which are drawn from major reviewing outlets), 26% of titles for the Xbox 360 were ranked as good (8 out of 10 or higher), and 33% of titles for the PS3 were ranked as good. On the Wii, just 11% got a good rating, measuring just 20 games total, four of which were ports of ancient PS2 or GameCube games.

The numbers hold up just as well at Metacritic. Visit the Wii page and you'll see a sea of yellow (mediocre) and red (bad) games in the "upcoming and recent releases" section on the left side of the page. As I write this there are only eight titles in the green (75 out of 100 points) or above. The 360 has 18 "good" picks to choose from.

What's going on here? For some reason, the creators of quick-buck shovelware titles have focused on the Wii. GameFunk notes that the "for all ages" marketing is what primarily predisposes developers to target the Wii, but I think there's somewhat less to it than that: The Wii is simply becoming a victim of its own success. The Wii is a phenomenon that now dominates the market. Why develop for the PS3 when you instantly attract twice the audience with a Wii game? The fact that Wii games take a fraction of the resources to develop (since they require only basic graphics work and gameplay is often simplistic) seals the deal.

Will Nintendo start to crack down on junk games and start enforcing quality control? Right now, Nintendo is relishing its position at the top of the charts, a place it hasn't been in  over a decade. It's easy to say that responsibility lies with Nintendo to police the games on its console, but, really, if people are willing to buy a Hannah Montana game, how can Nintendo legitimately say no? 

LINK: Wii Exposed: The Secret that Nintendo Tries to Ignore (UPDATE: As of Sunday night, the site is down due to the flood of traffic... try again on Monday morning.)