Topic: 3DS to be saved from shovelware?

Everything Nintendo makes is shovleware.
we're just too blind to see it.

Speak for yourself. I always saw it.

So...if you don't like a game it is automatically shovelware? I can guarantee you that there has always been more than two good DS games a year and just because they do not interest you does not make them bad.

Shovelware is everywhere. There's no denying it. You just have to ignore it.

@LordJumpMad Will you at least try to do something that doesn't solely revolve around making people mad? I know it's part of the identity, but being sarcastic without showing any up-front knowledge just makes you look arrogant.

As for the topic discussion, I haven't seen a large amount of shovelware for the 3DS. Of course, I also haven't been to a store that sells 3DS games in ages (internet shopping FTW), so I may have an incomplete opinion.

Here's the deal: shovelware exists thanks to crappy devs who can't develop games from a hole in the ground, and need money fast. So they develop a crappy game targeted at an audience that is easy to take advantage of: kids and their unknowing parents who have no idea how the game is. They try to lure them in w/ a low price, and guess what? They just got a bad game. How can shovelware on a system be reduced? Here are my theories:

• If a quality game exists, a bad one will have no hope of sales assuming it's not a fraction of the price & the quality game is well-known.
• If the demographic is hard to take advantage of, a crappy dev knows better than to target it. Like I'd buy a bad game.
• Prices. If you can't afford a good game, maybe it won't seem like much of a compromise to get a cheaper one, or worse, you'll have no other option.

The thing is, shovelware can exist because they sell it cheap, and most kids and parents don't know better about the game's quality, or can't tell the difference. The DS & Wii are perfect systems for developing shovelware on. Why not the 3DS & Wii U? The reasons are:

• The 3DS is more pricey; if you can get a 3DS, then why can't you get Mario Kart 7 instead of A Nobody's Go-Kart Racin'?
• Plus, is the next Pokemon on 3DS? No. So parents and their kids probably don't see as many reasons to upgrade. And shovelware devs depend on their customers. In other words, the 3DS doesn't have as much of a kid-oriented demographic yet. It's like making a sports car and trying to sell it to the elderly.

But in a matter of years, it will happen: we will be flooded w/ bad games. Heck, you can even see it starting now. The best way to get rid of it is to boycott it. Then bad devs will have no other option - shape up or ship out. So until the 3DS becomes a budget system, and has its demographic shift over more to becoming a kids' system, there will be less shovelware. But that's the thing. The 3DS will become that. So there is no completely saving the 3DS from shovelware. Almost as much of it will be sold for it, at best, so there will still be a market for bad budget games on 3DS (aka: shovelware).

That usually applies to Ubisoft and Activision more than anything. Almost everything they publish is shovelware, minus Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty respectively. I've only seen a few bad games from Nintendo this year. Of course, you seem to be the master of Sony/Microsoft fanboyism here, so...there's not much of a point arguing it. Now it's my turn: Sony's Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale looks kinda like imitation Super Smash Bros., doesn't it? (But I do have a decent amount of respect for Sony & Microsoft. I mean, how could a bad dev make legendary games like Uncharted or Halo? The answer is they can't. Good devs made those games. Devs just as, if not, almost as good as/better than Nintendo EAD.)

You're new here, aren't you? He was most likely joking. You, however? You're just flat out wrong, no ifs, ands or buts, mate. Ubisoft puts out more good than bad, and Activision can put out brilliant games when they want to. Just because they don't flood Nintendo systems with great games doesn't mean the good games they do make don't exist, pal.

Actually no, I know he was joking. That's kinda why I said he's a bit of a Sony fan. And, yeah, you're right, Ubisoft also make Rayman, Far Cry, etc., but darn, have you seen how much shovelware those two companies have made lately? Also, Activision also made Goldeneye 007's awesome remake and more too. Last, I'm not new here. I just haven't been doing much commenting lately.
EDIT: Oh, no buts. My bad. I wrote "but" in my response.

We're long gone from talking about logic here.

Its the age old story of a fanboy meets a shovleware, and they always bump heads.
Believe it or not, but there are people out there who have 3DSes, and do not like nintendo games, so they don't buy them.
They see a shovleware game that looks really cool, even better then the big name games, and become fooled into buying it, by judging it, by it's cover.

If anyone is to blame here, its nintendo for letting shovleware games come to their consoles, shame on them for letting people with dearms of making a game and making money off of it, Fo' shame.

About the economy thing discussed earlier:
As the economy goes down, so too goes the devs who don't have a lot of money. So only the good companies with a lot of money with which to make games prevail, so you see more good games.

well we NA got the sodoku game and europe is gonna have that black jack game thursday

How does Pokemon not count? That's like saying Smash Bros isn't a "Nintendo game" because HAL made it, that Kid Icarus: Uprising isn't a Nintendo game because Sora made it or that Metroid Prime isn't a Nintendo game because Retro made it. The DS got one hell of a swan song in Pokemon Black/White and now it's getting a second with Pokemon Black/White 2.

I don't know what game could be bigger than a Pokemans. Pokemans makes handheld Zelda look like a minor release.

edit: I suppose Kirby Mass Attack and Professor Layton don't count either

Layton has a game on iphone so it sure as hell doesn't count Imo.

But pokemon is owned by Nintendo and Game freak like sora is part owned by ninty so they count.

You have an excellent point. While it's a little ridiculous to ban a game based of its quality, something that cannot be perfectly be measured, nor have consistent readings, due to variance in opinion, and not being of any true quantity. Still, despite this being a decent reason to sue Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft, I believe they should consider some kind of system to make it harder to get shovelware off their systems, whether that be an approval process for a label, bias in marketing and quantity of info pages on the systems' respective shops, banning the game altogether, and more. This is actually a decent point, but you see, I can't blame any of the console manufacturers for not banning shovelware because of their most likely reason: people will try to sue for anything, and I mean anything, let alone their developed game getting banned for how it does on a scale of a value that can't even be measured perfectly. But heck, I'd like to see a console manufacturer who's brave enough to put up the guts to institute some kind of system to curb shovelware.

and? Layton has been a major DS title and, excluding the first, has remained an exclusive title. Ontop of that it's published by Nintendo outside of Japan. A Layton game for the DS is as close to a major "Nintendo" game as a DS swan song as you could get for the DS outside of Mario, Zelda or Pokemon.

The truth is the DS' twilight years have been a hell of a lot better than the Wii's. From the 18months before it's successor's launch the Wii (from ~May 2011) got Skyward Sword and Rhythm Heaven. The DS (Sep 2009) got Bowser's Inside Story, Pokemon Black/White, Professor Layton and the Unwound Future, Professor Layton and the Last Specter and Kirby: Mass Attack..... and there's another Pokemans on the way. For a while there the DS had better games coming out for it than the 3DS did so it's strange for people to say "I wish Nintendo would have done something big for the DS at its end".

yeah, it took 2 major Mario releases within a month for me to care about 3DS beyond playing DS games and old games I got for free. And Radiant Historia is still better than any 3DS game so there's that.

This. I saw a lot of crap I'd never heard of last time I looked at the 3DS section.

That's because like any gamer, I do not buy every good game that comes out. Good games are harder to find later in the DS cycle, not because there's necessarily fewer of them, but that there's an increased quantity of other games to sift through. I was also trying to base my definition of shovelware to games that are ignored by reviewers, irregardless of how I feel about them. I for one like my fair share of low scoring games, but games with no reviews directly indicate they are not worth my time. I like nintendolife because they invest in reviewing games that most sites ignore, which gives tribute to the developers, and assists us gamers by informing us of otherwise missed gems.

I also see that the 3DS market is starting to open up to more unnoticed titles (shovelware), but I agree with the consensus that developers need to work harder to make games for 3DS and it will not be as easy or worth it to them to focus on the 3DS as hard as the DS. Ironically the PSP has a much smaller library of titles, but also much smaller ratio of shovelware than the DS. The DS dominated the PSP though, as will the 3DS to the PSVita. In my opinion, the greatest competitor for the 3DS (in the pure gaming market) is the DS. So, I would expect shovelware development to stick to the DS for a while longer (they are still simultaneously catering the 3DS market), giving the 3DS some extra breathing room for its own software.

A lot of shovelware is usually unfavorable, but putting up policies favoring non-shovelware (aka AAA games and well known developers) isn't exactly fair. Virtually every developer'd kill to make good games, and there are many reasons why bad shovelware is made: horrible team collaboration, bad project long relationship with a game publisher, greedy game publishers, and perhaps rarely explored game design centered around...well, non-gamer stuff like toys. Lastly, developers and designers gain experience working on game console platforms. A more reasonable solution-- assuming that the proportion of usless games isn't as bad as (or worse than) Wii-- could be if Nintendo could somehow lure more-established developers to make games for the 3DS.