How? By a glut of poor imitations. This is according to Yoshiki Okamoto, who worked on games Street Fighter II, Resident Evil and, more recently, Folklore. Full Interview Here.

I guess it could happen, but it would take enough games to overwhelm the good games, as it did in the US crash. If there isn't enough, then it's just a glut of poor imitators, like what happened to one of his own games.

He warns that it is Nintendo's job to do something about this, but that strikes me as yet another person who forgot what happened when Nintendo applied strict standards. Even if this time, it would be actual quality control instead of censorship, it would still come across as Nintendo applying their own standards of quality, and forcing developers to comply. It would be like making developers 2nd party to Nintendo. That would likely drive developers away even faster than the cost of the N64 carts.

So even if there is a glut big enough to turn off consumers from gaming entirely there, Nintendo cannot try to make any direct moves to stop it. They are working to get rid of their old control freak reputation, and are working on an image of letting developers run free with ideas.

Of course they could sue the other developers to stop imitating their games, but does copyright law in Japan allow that?

EDIT: [b]Some of you don't seem to understand what I mean. I don't mean Nintendo simply saying to developers, "Hey, Guys, a lot of your games don't sell, and nobody likes them, so why don't you make them better." For one thing, it wouldn't work; developers would just brush them off.

For another thing, what I do mean is Nintendo forcing developers to bow to Nintendo's quality standards or they wouldn't allow the game to be on Nintendo systems. Developers would basically have to answer to Nintendo with their development, essentially making Nintendo part of the management, without actually being part of the company.

That would have the effect of guaranteeing no shovelware, but it would also make developers resent Nintendo, if they didn't drop Nintendo outright.[/b]