Here is a chart from gamerankings.com that shows the number of good games/bad games for each console.

As you can see, the Wii has a lot of shovelware and the majority of its good games come from Nintendo. Four of its good games are PS2/Gamecube ports.

It's funny (to me at least) that the PS3 has the best ratio of good to bad games.

Here is the Kotaku link: http://kotaku.com/385981/the-wii-has-many-many-crummy-games

yet it still manages to move insane amounts of software

nice graph! BTW, i think it's normal for a "casual" console to have many bad games, it was pretty much the same for the ps2! moreover, it's also pretty cheap to develop on the wii!

very true about the PS2
hah if we saw a PS2 graph im sure the ratio of good to bad games would be horrendous!!!

The N64 also had a far better ratio of good games to bad games than the Playstation did ...

Shovelware ends up making up most of the library of consoles that sell a lot of hardware because its entire strategy for existing is dependant on a numbers game; a small percentage of consumers will walk into a videogame store with the intention of buying a game and no paritcular game in mind (they could just be buying a gift), they will see the name "Ninjabread Man" with its awsome boxart and think that it is a good game, see its low price and buy it. A console which has sold twice as many pieces of hardware has twice the population of uninformed consumers who will (potentially) buy your game.

The problem is that this has the effect of making consumers unhappy with their purchases or, even worse, giving uneducated consumers the opinion that ALL Wii games are shovelware.

if they are still buying the wii.. obviously people aren't misled that easily

...i'll be back. stupid work.

Honestly, the uneducated buyer who picks up these games probably doesn't realize that these are not good games and/or would not hold it against the Wii ...

If your grandma buys you Ninjabread Man you probably don't hold it against Nintendo that this game exists, and if your neice buys herself Barbie's Horse Adventures she will probably like the game for what it is even though reviewers absolutely hate the game.

Are you kidding?  They know pretty much immediately.  They're the group that won't keep playing a game despite its flaws in the hopes of it having "a good story" or anything else.  They're the ones that will say it's boring and stop playing it. 

Having personally watched an 8 year old, 5 year old, and 4 year old's reactions to games ranging from Cars to EA Sports Playground to Super Mario Galaxy to Brawl, I can tell you that children are not dumb.  Cars was played for one night, beaten, and put on a shelf to rest.  Brawl they play on an almost daily basis.  Children can tell when a game is fun and when it isn't.