I actually do think there will be a big ressurgance of "hardcore games", it's exactly what happened with the PS2, the world got over saturated with big name massive budget titles, and creating them wasn't worth the effort because the market was highly cluttered with them. I see the exact same thing happening this generation also, Hell I've already seen 3 Carnival Mini-game type games on the Wii, how much longer do you think that genre can sell?

I believe the current gen will see that casual gaming is definately a massive profit, and many many people will jump on board. Casual games will sell to many, and the hardcore, massive budget games will slowly start becoming more rare, then as soon as the "Casual" market gets cluster-fucked, the shift will start sliding the other way, with a much higher install base thanks to the "casual" market's increase. 

I dunno just my pretty pennies :P 

 How's it selling out of curiosity? Do you see this is SE's future :)

From what I've seen, Chrono, it's the opposite; PS2 "hardcore" sales declined consistently in Japan over the last 3-4 years of its life, and apparently Nintendo went the route they did precisely because of this.

Not saying that a resurgence isn't possible, mind you: I just wouldn't place my bets their because of PS2 evidence. 

 Oh nonono I agree with your statement :P The PS2's "hardcore" market got ENTIRELY to saturated. There were so many high budget games that just got simply ignored because of some familiar heavy hitters. The Wii's casual take is "refreshing" to the market, as much as I don't approve of casual games on a home console (I'd much rather they keep to handhelds), I see why it's sucessfull, I just see the casual market overflowing faster than the Hardcore did. It doesn't seem like theres nearly enough variety to the genre (to me anyways). 

I don't want to be rude, but from what I have seen in my life good leaders ask questions when they're faced with a problem ... Simply saying "Real games don't sell on the Wii" or "Third party software doesn't sell on the Wii" is wasteful when you can be uncovering the true problems and building a strategy; in reality, one person's problem is another person's opportunity.

Come on people, Wada doesn’t say they won’t make games for Nintendo - Square Enix has been making baby games since forever. Casuality (in terms of presentation) clearly isn't a problem to them, but changes in the way their games are laid out most definitely is. Part of the blame lies with their long-term fans (“no turn-based combat in DQ IX”), but games like FF XIII show what they think makes for a 'real game.' That's why the Wii won't get their full support - because a cinematic experience is important to them, and they *hope* there's still a market for it. We’ll see how FF XIII does later on. Unless it’s a relative flop, don’t expect Square’s main franchises to stray too far from the HD consoles.

What i find disturbing is that S-E seems more and more focused on quick cash-ins and 'casual' titles in ways like porting FF and DQ games over and over to Gba, DS and PSP... And as the latest example of a console title Dragon Quest Swords... Which totally ISN'T a 'core'-title. A lot of their development is still fixed on 'core' titles, mainly announced for the PS3, titles like FFXIII and Versus XIII... White Knight Story is in the same line.

Point is, SQ-E, formerly 'core'-exclusive ... Has a/some (small) team(s) working on ports and casual games for multiple systems (mostly DS and Wii) whilst not abbandoning their core audience.

This results in a more diverse line-up and support of more platforms because they believe that there's certain group of people buying a console for a reason... As such, SQ-E will support more consoles this generation then it formerly did (Nes, Snes, PSX, PS2...). This is also a result of the fact that there are more 'healthy' systems in Japan (DS, Psp, Wii, PS2, PS3).

Oh well.

His missed opportunity.

Regret Island is an much visited destination.

John Lucas 

I do not think that this Interview was translated right. kotaku has reported that Wada spoke about the Japanese market as a whole. I guess the Interview concluded that he was specifically speaking about Nintendo when he was not.
-----------------------------------kotaku------------------------------------------------------------

Square Enix could always depend on Japan to snap up its seemingly endless RPG flow. Company president Yoichi Wada (on the left) has noticed a dip in core Japanese gamers. He points out about Japanese market growth:


...when it comes to games for core gamers, it's quite weak. Sooner or later core gamers will become impatient, and there'll be a point where 'real' games will resume growth, but it's not happening at the moment. However, for core games, the European and American markets are growing at enormous speed.


To capitalize on this expanding market, Square Enix is actively starting to look West, hoping to "develop a strategy to equal the moves made by Sega and Capcom, or maybe exceed them." Our advice: Mix up the genres, put out new IPs and go multi-platform. That means for everything. ----kotaku

Link: http://kotaku.com/342044/square-enix-calls-japanese-core-market-weak

This falls more in line with what Square has been stating about wanting to improve profits from western markets and diversifying the types of games they develop.  

I find the logic in "real games" somewhat flawed... Thinking of what kind of games the "real games" are, when most of them have lots of cinematics and often the game is focused on those. Then someone comes and says, that a game, which focuses solely on gameplay, isn't a "real game". Like Wii Sports and Wii Play.
If we think that the hardcore games are something that's focus is on gameplay (which they usually are), Wii Sports and Wii Play are more hardcore games than any game S-E have released in the last 10 years.

I was just few weeks ago debating about game developers and publishers complaining about the Wii and i stated that they complain for 2 reasons, which are that they bet the wrong horse and therefore are possibly losing a lot of money and the other reason was that they complain because they need to make something new for the Wii, instead of re-inventing all the old games with different name and characters.

I also think that, as someone pointed out, not having a dominant console may serve S-E (and other devs) better than having one, since that way they could get the best possible deals for their games from console manufacturers.