Topic: Curious about E-Shop quality control.

This is not intended as criticism of N, mostly idle curiosity...

Does anyone have any insight as to how Nintendo decide which software to allow on its e-shop?

I realise that the e-shop prides itself on quality over quantity and not having the "endless stream of rubbish before finding the good stuff" of other online services, but some real stinkers still pop up now and again and im wondering, why? although I am using NL scores and other dedicated N sites as the basis of my opinion on those games... an awful game is generally very clearly... an awful game.

I understand that a studio needs to get this "official licensed Nintendo developer" badge first but... then what? Does Nintendo playtest the software before release? I always see "Nintendo have been fantastic to work with" and "Have been very supportive and dont interfere" but I wonder how often they reject games for poor quality standards.

are Ninty worried about rejecting iffy software because they need the 3rd party support? or they see some future promise in the studio so will release their shovelware before they work on bigger projects?... or is it a case that over 52 weeks a year they need to have something/anything to release cometh thursday? take a look at the e-shop lists under "most popular", then scroll back to the last page... do Nintendo need to keep these poor-selling games for a contrcted amount of time?

Dont get me wrong, Im actually over the moon with most of the e-shop content... however... where gummi bears lurk... : /

Opinions please

All Nintendo cares about these days is whether something will break your system.

They are not in the business of refusing junk like they were in the NES days.

Nintendo tests for glitches that will crash the system, and that sort of thing. Otherwise, the game can be utterly horrid to play. Surely someone out there will enjoy even the worst games...

As long as the game is playable on a basic level, and won't crash every 20 minutes or destroy the system, chances are the big 3 will license it.

I hate to be that guy, but Nintendo definitely did not refuse junk in the NES days.

They have to work, they have to be rated, and they have to follow a few guidelines. However, whether a game is "junk" or not is entirely subjective. What you may think is "junk" and what I think is "junk" may be different

Believe it or not, even games you and I may think are rubbish have their public that will buy them and may even enjoy them a lot.
That's money for the developer and Nintendo and enjoyment for the user.

As long as the game is not completely unplayable mess (and believe me when I say this: even if a reviewer or other gamers say a game is like that, they are probably exaggerating. If it got released then it is probably not unplayable) and it doesn't directly violate copy rights or other things,mit will get released on the eShop.

it's also not a good idea to reject a company only because you think their game sucks that leads to breaking bridges, you don't want that same company to come with an awesome game later on and not bring it to your platform because of a broken relationship

@ferthepoet I honestly never thought of that! Yay, insight! But yeah, if Nintendo was as elitist as some gamers, Nintendo would not be a company for much longer.

Basically what everyone else has said. They do have a quality control, but only to a basic standard. However this means all kinds of junk can get on there as long as they meet basic criteria.

Wonder how they decided what to not allow during the NES era then.

I know Nintendo of America forced the superior PC Engine versions of many games to not be allowed to be released.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes of the Lance is a better game that most eshop/dsiware. (At least the difficulty is reasonable).

The idea that Nintendo actually monitored the "quality" of titles during the NES era is a myth. The Nintendo "Seal of Quality" was nothing more than a marketing gimmick.

Back then they did the same sort of QA that they do now — making sure that the software would run on the platform.

And even then some of the "quality" was overlooked. The NES also had bad games and broken ones too

Nintendo's approval process is more about the games functioning correctly on their systems. If you ever go through a bunch of random apps on a smart phone you will see that not many of them function correctly. They may technically work but a lot of things are unclear and they do not function consistently, which is why a completely open system is bad. Having a closed system like today's consoles doesn't mean bad games won't get through but it means the games that are available on the system will work correctly on your system.

I don't know the specifics, but I know they limited what content could be used in-game. In Maniac Mansion, the "microwaving a hamster" bit caused quite a bit of controversy, even though that would be tame by today's standards, but that's an example of what they (usually) wouldn't let through. Another I can think of is Mortal Kombat on the SNES, where blood was removed in place of the more family-friendly sweat. They still do some content control, most notably through rejecting The Binding of Issac on 3DS due to "questionable religious content." But, like others have mentioned, their control is more functionality i.e. does the game crash frequently, is buggy, etc.

Nintendo, back in the NES days, held exclusive rights to the manufacture of NES cartridges, and they used this to implement a policy of only allowing publishers to publish 5 games per year on the NES. Something (I'm guessing) to do with propriety of technology, and a pseudo-quality control by not flooding the market with tons of low-quality games. Some companies, notably Tengen, tried to bypass this control by using some very shady business practices, but were met with limited success until the emergence of SEGA as a console rival forced Nintendo to lax its controls to keep publishers/developers making games for them.