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You there, pimple faced 360 fan in the corner.
Yes, you with your ADHD and twitchy thumbs.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/wii/the-legend-of-zelda-twilight-princess

http://www.metacritic.com/game/wii/the-legend-of-zelda-skyward-sword

OMG THEY'RE FLOPPING!

These are adventure games, not heave heavy hardcore action games.
Take them for what they are, and they're easily best in their class.

You there, pimple faced 360 fan in the corner.
Yes, you with your ADHD and twitchy thumbs.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/wii/the-legend-of-zelda-twilight-princess

http://www.metacritic.com/game/wii/the-legend-of-zelda-skyward-sword

OMG THEY'RE FLOPPING!

These are adventure games, not heave heavy hardcore action games.
Take them for what they are, and they're easily best in their class.

Oh, is that why it has a 90% composite critic score? Yeah yeah, technical glitches and whatnot, but as for actual gameplay... oh yeah, you must play CoD and are just trolling. Carry on.

"Zelda? A remake of an old game that wasn't exactly the best to begin with."

Actually, that Zelda is considered the very best pretty much unanimously. See:

http://apps.metacritic.com/games/platforms/n64/legendofzeldaocarina

I agree with you on everything else, except on Sony; I don't think they'll make a huge comeback with the new portable.

Some games retail in holland for about 50 euro's.

Really? The standard 3DS price for games in the US is $40. It's nice to know that the tradition of "overpriced for Europe" is continuing. (Let's see, according to Google, 50 Euros is ... $75. Ouch. Also, bets on when Slashdot finally realizes there's a Euro symbol and allows people to use it, instead of it coming out â? I'm guessing never, because apparently allowing the Euro symbol means they must allow BIDI marks. No, really! That's the excuse.)

As for the zelda remake... that is the MUST have title? Come one, that should have been a freebee or a special bundle.

First off, yes, it's by far the best title for the system. By 16 points on Metacritic at present, in fact. (At time of posting, Zelda 3D is 95, and the next highest is Dead or Alive Dimensions at 79.)

Secondly, I disagree it should be free, but bundling it with the 3DS - especially considering the price drop - would have been a good idea. The 3DS comes with no games (no, be honest, AR Games and Face Raiders don't count), and it could really use a good bundled title.

In the end, I think the 3DS will, eventually, replace the DS. It really is a better handheld in every way - if you ignore the battery life issue. So only after Nintendo solves the battery life issue.

Assuming they can solve the battery life issue.

Not before.

Are you including shovelware? Because there seemed to be a whole lot of that on the wii.

"Everyone is buying the wii? Quick, make a game and slap it out there by next month! Doesn't matter what it is! With these numbers, people are going to be buying this game just because it is for the wii! Ninjas and gingerbread men you say'Ninjabread man'? ? Holy hell! We don't even need a game with that, the title alone will sell!"

The companies that did that and all those others deserved to lose money.

Look at the top scores by metacritic.. Mostly nintendo titles. 3rd party developers didn't really seem to try. It seems like by the time they realized people had actually bought the wii, people who would have bought their games had already put theirs away. I for one got tired of waiting for someone to make a fucking game for it and started ignoring the offerings completely. If they lost money on the wii, it was their own fault for not putting forth a serious effort. (Okami may be the sole exception there, offering a good game early on and still lost money.)

Are you including shovelware? Because there seemed to be a whole lot of that on the wii.

"Everyone is buying the wii? Quick, make a game and slap it out there by next month! Doesn't matter what it is! With these numbers, people are going to be buying this game just because it is for the wii! Ninjas and gingerbread men you say'Ninjabread man'? ? Holy hell! We don't even need a game with that, the title alone will sell!"

The companies that did that and all those others deserved to lose money.

Look at the top scores by metacritic.. Mostly nintendo titles. 3rd party developers didn't really seem to try. It seems like by the time they realized people had actually bought the wii, people who would have bought their games had already put theirs away. I for one got tired of waiting for someone to make a fucking game for it and started ignoring the offerings completely. If they lost money on the wii, it was their own fault for not putting forth a serious effort. (Okami may be the sole exception there, offering a good game early on and still lost money.)

Really? HL2 is still brought constantly in the gaming media at the very least. Perhaps because it's the highest rated game of all time?
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/half-life-2

My N64 gathered dust. My Gamecube gathered dust. My Wii gathered dust. Why repeat the process?

Absolutely. Look at Metacritic's game releases by score by year for the Wii, for 2011, and you can see what the problem is. Count up the number of "green" games, and total by year.

2007: 19.
2008: 42.
2009: 64.
2010: 44.
2011: a miserable 10, if the current rate continues.

In comparison, the PS3 has had more good games than the Wii every single year, and its lead has increased every year.

So the Wii had three years where there were a decent number of good games. And a lot of those were ports of older games. And even then, other consoles had more good games, and when games were multiplatform, the Wii versions were usually inferior.

I have no interest in Wii U at this point. What I want from Nintendo is for them to either ship games, or get third party developers shipping games that don't suck. Or ideally, both.

Ironically, with the DS it's the opposite problem. There's a ton of good DS software, and I have no interest in the 3DS because they're moving in the direction of stupid gimmicks. I'm actually more interested in Sony's offerings for my next handheld game system.

Where's the equivalent of You Don't Know Jack for modern consoles?

Released earlier this year. http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-3/you-dont-know-jack

Given Deux Ex 2, and the last several Square Enix releases, I have every faith in their ability to fuck that up.

I suppose I should limit that to Eidos releases. Let's see, Eidos's last big release was... Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days. And that was... ummm...

So, yeah, I think I'll wait for the reviews before running out to purchase.

Look at the list of the highest rated games of 2010. See how many times Mass Effect 2 and its expansions shows up. I count 3 with a score of 85 or better. The game of Mass Effect 2 itself is the top scoring of the year with a 94, which makes it tied for 3rd place with a bunch of games as one of the best PC games of all time.

Sorry, got a little excited there for a second. It's a great game, with RPG elements and FPS elements that does a better job than Fallout in my opinion and has a *much* better story too. It's like Final Fantasy story and FMV meets Star Wars mythology meets RPG inventory and upgrades meets FPS combat with the unique twist of pause-and-plan combat and the best use of cover I've seen, and a pretty good balance as far as how much damage you can give/take before dying (unlike the ridiculous amount of damage enemies can take in Borderlands) and realistic feeling accuracy spread of weapons. The weapons and upgrades are good too but I have to say I preferred the inventory of the first Mass Effect, other than how you had to manage hundreds of ammo upgrades and such. I've looked for a comparable game now that I'm done with Mass Effect and halfway through Mass Effect 2 but nothing compares with all of the same elements.

A bonus is that the dialog choices and storyline options you made in Mass Effect get transferred to Mass Effect 2 by importing your savegame, and will also continue into Mass Effect 3. That's just amazing in my opinion. It's the way games should be made. I could keep going but you get the picture. I put the game up there in the same league as the Zelda series, which says a lot.

Look at the list of the highest rated games of 2010. See how many times Mass Effect 2 and its expansions shows up. I count 3 with a score of 85 or better. The game of Mass Effect 2 itself is the top scoring of the year with a 94, which makes it tied for 3rd place with a bunch of games as one of the best PC games of all time.

Sorry, got a little excited there for a second. It's a great game, with RPG elements and FPS elements that does a better job than Fallout in my opinion and has a *much* better story too. It's like Final Fantasy story and FMV meets Star Wars mythology meets RPG inventory and upgrades meets FPS combat with the unique twist of pause-and-plan combat and the best use of cover I've seen, and a pretty good balance as far as how much damage you can give/take before dying (unlike the ridiculous amount of damage enemies can take in Borderlands) and realistic feeling accuracy spread of weapons. The weapons and upgrades are good too but I have to say I preferred the inventory of the first Mass Effect, other than how you had to manage hundreds of ammo upgrades and such. I've looked for a comparable game now that I'm done with Mass Effect and halfway through Mass Effect 2 but nothing compares with all of the same elements.

A bonus is that the dialog choices and storyline options you made in Mass Effect get transferred to Mass Effect 2 by importing your savegame, and will also continue into Mass Effect 3. That's just amazing in my opinion. It's the way games should be made. I could keep going but you get the picture. I put the game up there in the same league as the Zelda series, which says a lot.

"You're taking potshots at Wii games that you don't like,"

I'm not taking pot shots. I'm seriously discussing wide acknowledgement of LOWER GAME QUALITY, I must have played them to know they are of lower quality compared to past games, not only that I bought them on launch day. So please take your "fanboy defense" elsewhere. I'm trying to have a serious discussion about the merits and drawbacks of the Wii you come along taking it as a personal attack and "defend".

Perhaps you would like to see other M's Metacritic score? (79 FYI)

http://www.metacritic.com/game/wii/metroid-other-m

It's quote obvious that a lot of people are aware of the decline of many of Nintendo's franchises and the evidence is abundant on the net.

I'm not merely taking "pot shots" at these games, many gamers feel the exact same way. That the quality of games is going down in GENERAL across platforms. See: Supcom 2, Civ 5, etc, and look at user reviews and metacritic ratings.

http://www.metacritic.com/browse/games/score/metascore/all/wii?sort=desc

Apparently a lot of people disagree with you.

I get the feeling someone is on the war path with video games lately. At least regarding the story trend and I'm not saying I disagree... just saying.

In any event, the issue isn't even as specific as DLC. Sure, there are plenty of awful examples and I would very much like to point the finger at Halo. Whole sections of multi-player simply disappear if you do not purchase the down-loadable map packs. This isn't even close to misrepresentation, but more like bandits along the highway. At some point, someone thought it would be a really good idea to cripple your current style of play unless you pay a few dollars. I believe someone's soul is headed toward damnation for that one.

Ignoring fire and brimstone, let's get back to the broader and real issue at hand. Bad game or bad content for purchase are not really the issues either. The fact is if we had more honest reviews floating around this would be a no brainer. The truth is we as gamers have been sold out countless times by these fan fiction writers who like to pretend they are writing a game review. In my personal experience, Red Dead Redemption was pretty much the worst multiplayer experience I have had in a while. It however managed to have a lot of good reviews. A more recent example of abuse of a good name is COD Black Ops. This is a good example of how to take something that wasn't terribly and just twist it into a hellish house of mirrors reflecting on a shadow of it's former self.

Having been in the broadcast world for a good while in the past there are important lessons I did learn there. What I happen to like or dislike may not necessarily be in tune with the populace at large. However, I would like to point out that the current early trend with user reviews seem to favor my opinion http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/call-of-duty-black-ops?rating_login=1.

I believe what has happened with both retail games and addon pay content is something very simple. It appears to be much easier to simply spend oodles on marketing and advertising rather then produce something original. (Well, original is probably a bad term... how about enjoyable). It cannot be argued these triple a titles have a fairly large budget, but in my horrid and unimportant opinion is that publishers have gone the McDonalds route. Seriously, how else would you sale poison the the people of our great nation.

Oh come on. 50% rating is small potatoes when it comes to bad. You wanna see the worst? Rogue Warrior. 29% at Metacritic. Daikatana is an absolute classic compared to this steaming turd. Look at is scores. It didn't get a single positive review. It's so bad it doesn't even circle back around to good. On steam, it came with the QuakeCon package. I've benn too scared to install it. What if it destroys my machine through sheer awfulness

Metacritic. Only aggregates the reviews, weights by ratings (and it does normalize it, refusing to accept common practice among reviewers to use 50% as minimal score) and publishes the final score.

You ever notice on Metacritic how the higher the marketing budget of the game, the greater the positive disparity between Metascore and user score?
But in contrast small indie games or low budget releases are usually scored evenly.
Of course it could just be a combination of hype backlash, bribery and reviewers suffering from an unusual vulnerability to marketing ploys.

Some examples of high budget games with huge score disparities.
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/call-of-duty-movdern-warfare-2
http://apps.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/spore

You ever notice on Metacritic how the higher the marketing budget of the game, the greater the positive disparity between Metascore and user score?
But in contrast small indie games or low budget releases are usually scored evenly.
Of course it could just be a combination of hype backlash, bribery and reviewers suffering from an unusual vulnerability to marketing ploys.

Some examples of high budget games with huge score disparities.
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/call-of-duty-movdern-warfare-2
http://apps.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/spore

I was going to cite Mafia 2 but it looks like only a few publications actually criticised that badly (which happen to include the ones I actually read): See the list.

Actually it looks like you're in the minority. According to Metacritic, Doom 3 averages a respectable 87 Rating, it even garners a little over 7 in the user average. Additionally, id software moved over 3.5 million copies of Doom 3 as of 2007

So, I'm going to call bologna that "the vast, vast majority of people disagree", because it seems a large majority of people actually agree that Doom 3 was a decent game.

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/wii/stopstressadayoffury

If only there was a way that you could listen to a song before buying it, or read someone else's opinion about a movie before watching it. And if only there were free sources of music and movies to watch...

This is why services like Steam should offer an x-day money-back guarantee. Buy it. If you think it sucks, tell them. They can then remove the game from your account and you can "delete local game data," in exchange for a full refund.

Give users a "limit" to how often they can do it to the same game.

I'd love a feature like that. I've had kicked Lucidity off my account so fast. I'm not the only one who disliked that game.

Lesson learned: Don't buy a game based solely on the developer's reputation.

Given the mention of PC...there's a good reason why it's #86 on PC (4 times lower than San Adreas), instead of #1.

The PC port was just unjustifiably buggy and lame, with Rockstar withholding fixes for months at a time.

Given that it's based on critic (not popular) review, you could even say that the 86 position is too damn good for it, especially since USERS give it a mere 4.6/10. http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/grandtheftauto4
  That, is a freaking trainwreck, especially given that it used particularly invasive form of SecuROM DRM which was the principle reason generally agreed upon (perhaps wayback has archives of the GTA4 forums just after release) for it performing so slow. http://www.pcgamefuntime.com/2008/12/grand-theft-auto-iv-drm-debacle/

You could throw a monster machine at it, and get 14-20FPS, even on low detail and low resolution.

If you point to how well received console versions were when somebody references the PC port, you clearly don't know what the hell you're talking about.

Yeah, I mean, it only got the best reviews of any game ever released for the current crop of consoles. Clearly the fact that it doesn't suit your idea of what GTA "should be" means it's a train wreck.

Yeah, I mean, it only got the best reviews of any game ever released for the current crop of consoles. Clearly the fact that it doesn't suit your idea of what GTA "should be" means it's a train wreck.

Yes you can. The 360 & PS3 demonstrate far higher quality 3rd party games than the Wii, and many of them exceed or match first party offerings in terms of sales and critical consensus.

Metacritic placed Wii and DS last in 2009 in ratings compared to other current platforms. And that's even without considering how much Wii/DS shovelware slipped under the Metacritic radar that would have dragged the scores even lower.

The shovelware problem is clearly far, far worse on Nintendo platforms. Why is the question but it probably boils down to:

1. A higher % of ignorant owners. Kids and grannies whose purchase decision boils down to - is it made by Nintendo OR was it advertised heavily on kids tv OR does it have a pretty box art.
2. Lack of motivation by 3rd party publishers to make high quality titles. If the consumers can't tell good from bad, why bother spending money making something good?

Why aren't we seeing any games manufacturer try for a push in games that aren't quite as destructive?

You're right! Those damn game makers should try making games which aren't violent. Maybe someone could make a game where you're in a band, or maybe you're a DJ. How about sports? Someone should make a football game, or a snowboarding game, or skateboarding, or bowling!. If only someone had thought to make a game to tie into the Winter Olympics! There's such a lack of imagination in games these days.

Why aren't we seeing any games manufacturer try for a push in games that aren't quite as destructive?

You're right! Those damn game makers should try making games which aren't violent. Maybe someone could make a game where you're in a band, or maybe you're a DJ. How about sports? Someone should make a football game, or a snowboarding game, or skateboarding, or bowling!. If only someone had thought to make a game to tie into the Winter Olympics! There's such a lack of imagination in games these days.

Why aren't we seeing any games manufacturer try for a push in games that aren't quite as destructive?

You're right! Those damn game makers should try making games which aren't violent. Maybe someone could make a game where you're in a band, or maybe you're a DJ. How about sports? Someone should make a football game, or a snowboarding game, or skateboarding, or bowling!. If only someone had thought to make a game to tie into the Winter Olympics! There's such a lack of imagination in games these days.

Why aren't we seeing any games manufacturer try for a push in games that aren't quite as destructive?

You're right! Those damn game makers should try making games which aren't violent. Maybe someone could make a game where you're in a band, or maybe you're a DJ. How about sports? Someone should make a football game, or a snowboarding game, or skateboarding, or bowling!. If only someone had thought to make a game to tie into the Winter Olympics! There's such a lack of imagination in games these days.

Why aren't we seeing any games manufacturer try for a push in games that aren't quite as destructive?

You're right! Those damn game makers should try making games which aren't violent. Maybe someone could make a game where you're in a band, or maybe you're a DJ. How about sports? Someone should make a football game, or a snowboarding game, or skateboarding, or bowling!. If only someone had thought to make a game to tie into the Winter Olympics! There's such a lack of imagination in games these days.

Why aren't we seeing any games manufacturer try for a push in games that aren't quite as destructive?

You're right! Those damn game makers should try making games which aren't violent. Maybe someone could make a game where you're in a band, or maybe you're a DJ. How about sports? Someone should make a football game, or a snowboarding game, or skateboarding, or bowling!. If only someone had thought to make a game to tie into the Winter Olympics! There's such a lack of imagination in games these days.

Why aren't we seeing any games manufacturer try for a push in games that aren't quite as destructive?

You're right! Those damn game makers should try making games which aren't violent. Maybe someone could make a game where you're in a band, or maybe you're a DJ. How about sports? Someone should make a football game, or a snowboarding game, or skateboarding, or bowling!. If only someone had thought to make a game to tie into the Winter Olympics! There's such a lack of imagination in games these days.

Why aren't we seeing any games manufacturer try for a push in games that aren't quite as destructive?

You're right! Those damn game makers should try making games which aren't violent. Maybe someone could make a game where you're in a band, or maybe you're a DJ. How about sports? Someone should make a football game, or a snowboarding game, or skateboarding, or bowling!. If only someone had thought to make a game to tie into the Winter Olympics! There's such a lack of imagination in games these days.

Why aren't we seeing any games manufacturer try for a push in games that aren't quite as destructive?

You're right! Those damn game makers should try making games which aren't violent. Maybe someone could make a game where you're in a band, or maybe you're a DJ. How about sports? Someone should make a football game, or a snowboarding game, or skateboarding, or bowling!. If only someone had thought to make a game to tie into the Winter Olympics! There's such a lack of imagination in games these days.

Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay: http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/chroniclesofriddick One of very few movie-based games that's markedly BETTER than its movie.

According to MetaCritic, there are 26 Xbox games with 90+ ratings, 20 PS3 games with 90+ ratings, and 9 games on the Wii with 90+ ratings.
I don't see the value proposition in the Wii now that the more powerful and capable competition with better games have come down to a point where the price difference is largely irrelevant.

Staying locked in your bubble won't allow you to understand where you're wrong.
But it's pretty obvious : "Metacritic", "more powerful and capable competition with better games".
You are stuck in your old values that the Wii is disrupting right since before its launch, and you use Metacritic to confort you, a site that compile reviews from site stuck exactly in these same old values.
Sorry, but the Wii just shattered the record of sales for a console in one month in the USA this december (3.81 millions Wii sold, PS2, previous record owner for home consoles, was at 2.69).
It more than exceeded the sales of PS3 and XB360 combined.

According to MetaCritic, there are 26 Xbox games with 90+ ratings, 20 PS3 games with 90+ ratings, and 9 games on the Wii with 90+ ratings.

I don't see the value proposition in the Wii now that the more powerful and capable competition with better games have come down to a point where the price difference is largely irrelevant.

the Wii is awesome because the games are *fun*.

The Wii had the lowest rated games of all platforms in 2009.

Wii: 362 games... 1 considered great.

Xbox 360/PC: 7 considered great. PS3: 10 considered great.

User scores are generally more trustworthy than "professional," bought-and-sold reviewers. Example: http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/ds/coptherecruit

The article also mentions that the DS Game - Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars sold poorly, selling only 89,000 copies, way under expectations. This bums me out, since I bought it, bought copies as gifts, and loved it - the DS touch-screen interface is something I find very enjoyable to use. With such low sales, a sequel seems unlikely, in spite of the fact that it received the all-time high score for the DS at metacritic - http://www.metacritic.com/games/ds/

I have a strong suspicion that the easy availability of ROMs for the game might have had something to do with the low sales (although objective data is hard to come by). By comparison, an iphone game was 80% unpaid copies, 20% paid - http://www.joystiq.com/2009/10/26/developer-claims-80-percent-piracy-rate-for-latest-iphone-releas/

The "change your business model" idea suggested for music companies is actually happening for games - Dragon Age: Origins now ships essentially crippled, with magic items to boost stats and useful party-member NPCs held back until you register an EA.com account and use the "free" code contained in a sealed shrink-wrapped game, or pay extra for it as DLC (downloadable content). This then adds all the server-overload fun of an MMO launch to a single-player game. It also required a tedious install reboot install loop on a console. Argh.

I'm not sure what the answer is long-term, other than everything will eventually be network-enabled only, as that's the only way to ensure payment. Standalone games will wither and die. Bummer. (With various exceptions for things like Dwarf Fortress which are free and take donations.)

In the meantime, Wil Wheaton's advice should be extended beyond just playing games, to include publishing and acquiring games - "Don't be a Dick."

The wii has no software.
Hahaha oh wow. I guess none of the games listed here are software.

For shame, how could you forget Demon's Souls? Even notoriously-harsh-towards-PS3-exclusives Edge UK managed to give it a 9/10 as *the* dungeon crawler to have this generation. God I can't wait to pick it up. Not to mention Uncharted 2, neck-and-neck with Super Mario Galaxy as the highest-rated console exclusive. The 360 was hands-down the console to have at the start of this generation, but that lead has long since vanished.

For shame, how could you forget Demon's Souls? Even notoriously-harsh-towards-PS3-exclusives Edge UK managed to give it a 9/10 as *the* dungeon crawler to have this generation. God I can't wait to pick it up. Not to mention Uncharted 2, neck-and-neck with Super Mario Galaxy as the highest-rated console exclusive. The 360 was hands-down the console to have at the start of this generation, but that lead has long since vanished.

I think that was a joke.

Sonic Adventure 2 was viewed as less fun than the original by many, and the GameCube's version of 2 suffered poor sales.

But I could be wrong.

I never understood this. Sonic Adventure 2 was fun and I greatly enjoyed it on the Dreamcast. Did it have its problems? Sure, but it was still an enjoyable game and could show how well a 3D Sonic game could be. It got great reviews on the Dreamcast even! Then comes the Gamecube version with ABSOLUTELY ZERO CHANGES to the single player and an added multiplayer. Suddenly "Oh noes, this sucks!" and it gets terrible reviews.

I'd blame this mostly on the sudden shift in the cynical nature of the media during this time. They pretty much just want to shit on stuff given any oppurtunity. If this was post-Dreamcast Sonic games (counting the SA2 port as a DC game as it is a port) it'd make more sense but why the sudden change of attitude from the Dreamcast version to the Gamecube version in under a year I'll never truely understand.

Oh well, screw reviewers, I enjoyed the game and that's all that matters.

I think that was a joke.

Sonic Adventure 2 was viewed as less fun than the original by many, and the GameCube's version of 2 suffered poor sales.

But I could be wrong.

I never understood this. Sonic Adventure 2 was fun and I greatly enjoyed it on the Dreamcast. Did it have its problems? Sure, but it was still an enjoyable game and could show how well a 3D Sonic game could be. It got great reviews on the Dreamcast even! Then comes the Gamecube version with ABSOLUTELY ZERO CHANGES to the single player and an added multiplayer. Suddenly "Oh noes, this sucks!" and it gets terrible reviews.

I'd blame this mostly on the sudden shift in the cynical nature of the media during this time. They pretty much just want to shit on stuff given any oppurtunity. If this was post-Dreamcast Sonic games (counting the SA2 port as a DC game as it is a port) it'd make more sense but why the sudden change of attitude from the Dreamcast version to the Gamecube version in under a year I'll never truely understand.

Oh well, screw reviewers, I enjoyed the game and that's all that matters.

This is nonsense. "Consumers should change" is sth you should never have to say, or it shows you are having a very big problem. Consumer is NEVER the problem. No industry has ANY right of sales that consumers should abide to.
If consumers don't buy your product, obviously the industry is the problem.

It would be nice if economic troubles caused gamers themselves to be more selective about which games they bought. A few years ago when I worked at gamestop, most of the customers (children especially) seemed to buy games based ENTIRELY OFF THE BOXART. "Hey, I have a PS2. Hey, I enjoyed the movie 'fight club". Hey, this box which appears to have been the first game I picked up is Fight club for the PS2. That's GOT to be a good one!"

I see lots of problem in that, and none are the consumer's fault.
Why couldn't the specialised store inform the consumer? Why did the developer make a bad game out of this license? Why are the licensee making the developers do such bad games?
Why the gamer should assume that the game can't be good? What will happen when he realise that the game he bought has no interest compared to the movie ? He won't buy game again.
Fatigue will set in, and a time will arrive (like now) where he will have to make a choice, and he will dump buying games. The industry is the problem in all that.

Many people are apparently buying wii games at random, the effect being that most of the games for the wii are barely playable.

No, that's not true at all!
3rd parties are making lots of bad Wii games, hoping to screw the Wii customers. What happens is that less and less people buy games from those companies, and more and more people buy Nintendo games, which are good games. People start to recognise which companies make good games, when before they wouldn't pay attention. The 3rd parties have done that to themselves, the consumer is not at fault. People new to games assumed that games for the Wii were at least as good as the game that comes with the console.
These people are not the problem for being disappointed, those that made these games are the problem.
And remember that 3rd parties are the ones responsible for this situation. Before PS1, there was regulation by the console maker as to the quality and quantity of games that every 3rd parties could put out every year on their console. This ensured at least some level of quality, and even then there was lots of shovelware. Then came PS1 which allowed anyone to make anything on the console, and the 3rd parties flocked to the PS1, sending a clear message that it was what they wanted.

it would be nice if gamers were more supportive, or at least more forgiving, of games that try to do new things. A lot of "hardcore" gamers get very entrenched opinions about what a game should and should not be according to genre. It's like if moviegoers complained that a movie wasn't formulaic enough.

True enough.
This usually leads to a decreasing market, as more and more people are left behind by the level of sophistication that goes higher and higher, and becomes inaccessible to newcomers.