I am going to make this as short as possible. With the reveal of the Nintendo Switch, multiple questions have been brought up as to who makes up the majority of the gaming market. Gamers on the internet have brought up certain concerns with the Nintendo Switch, and in my opinion they are not even that important to cause the console to be "doomed". The average gamer does not know anything about specs, nor has 3 consecutive hours of time on their hands outside of their home to play video games. I just want to know your take on the consumer market.

I wrote an article about this that goes more in depth and if you want to check all of it out, here it is:

https://gamerelay.wordpress.com/2016/11/12/opinion-hardcore-gamers-are-not-the-majority-of-the-gaming-market/

UPDATE: In order to clarify things:

Casual Gamer: One who just bought games just to have a gaming console. Does not invest much time or money into gaming, but sees it as a trend.
Average: Someone who goes and buys a good amount of games and systems every generation but does not stress on technical issues. Does not go on the internet to search up specs or info about companies and such. Does not play the game to perfect it but plays for fun.
Hardcore: Pays attention to gaming news, specs, consoles, companies and other details as well as puts a lot of time and money into gaming.

So I am a hardcore gamer? Hm... I've always considered myself being rather casual, because I don't invest time into perfecting a game. I take one, play it until I am bored and move on to the other one.

Always thought I was a hardcore gamer. Turns out Im just average...

The majority of gamers are between casual to average.

Theres atleast 3 types:

Casual gamer
Avg gamer
Hardcore gamer

Also I think the "avg gamer" + "hardcore gamer" is bigger than people realise, probably just as important as the casual one.

A hardcore gamer consumes a lot of games because its their passtime. Knowing specs doesnt make anyone hardcore anything. I have a friend who plays his Xbox 360  and has the most powerful PC (but wont play on it), and knows his specs....but hes still casual.

What do you mean by "hardcore gamers" and what do you mean by "gaming market?" Gotta define our terms first.

If by "gaming market" you mean everyone who plays video games, that's not a market. It's a vague and frankly useless demographic. There's at least two major devisions - dedicated gaming vs mobile gaming (technically includes browser gaming and all fhat but mobile is 90% of it) - and then the dedicated market is somewhat devided into handhelds and home consoles. When discussing the Switch, PS4, Xbone, gaming PCs, we are discussing the dedicated gaming market.

Now, if by hardcore gamers you mean gamers who pursue gaming as a fairly sizable hobby - the most common pseudo definition - then that demographic does make up the majority of the dedicated gaming market, sorta by default since the financial barrier to entry for that market is markedly higher than the mobile sector. If by hardcore gamers you mean just the E3 watchers and spec sheet readers than yeah, they are considerably smaller.

I think the market is too complicated, I mean, I have all the just dance games next to all the "hardcore" games.

So are you saying one cannot be a hardcore user without caring about specs?

I agree with your 3 categories though, but that makes no sense to me.

Yeah that was the biggest problem I had writing about this. To some hardcore gamers "average" may be like them, so I didnt know if I could use that too lmao.