You would think with all that money they could fix the problem we Wii owners have like storage issue, a hardcore games, and some voice chat. Also have a better onilne system.

@pimpcoop: I'd say that most of these problems don't have much to do with money, rather with planning and strategy.

By the way, voice chat is already being solved, and regarding hardcore games Nintendo is doing its part. That is unless you want the Reggienator to start sending death threats to third parties.

The casual movement really pays off...I'm afraid for the industry now

@Pristine20:

You're afraid for the industry, as opposed to the current status quo of HD console development, in which most third parties can't make a profit, let alone a healthy profit?

Don't worry, as soon as more third parties start taking the Wii seriously, the industry will look much healthier.

Yeah, that is where the "danger" to Sony is.

Although Ninty >>> MS Entertainment division - its tiny compared to MS as a whole (Windows licenses prints much more money than Wii + DS does).

But Ninty is beating Sony as a whole - not just SCEE. Sony has a huge revenue base though - its just not that profitable.

I guess I should have said I'm afraid for myself? Because If thats where the industry is headed, I guess I'll have to find a different hobby as sooon as gaming becomes about wii fit, wii sports, mario party, we ski, etc as these are the kinds of titles that generate the most profit.

As NJ5 already said, these problems are not really money dependant ...

The "Hard-Core" games problem is far more dependant on time being that the games Nintendo creates to appeal to this demographic are under development, and there has been a steady increase in the quantity of games announced from third parties to appeal to this group since the Wii launched. By this time next year, many of the people who were complaining of Nintendo abandoning their core will be eating (a lot of) crow.

The storage probem is a much larger issue because how can Nintendo solve it for good without producing an expensive add on, or something that opens up piracy concerns? The best solution I can think of (at the momeny) is for Nintendo to allow the SD card to be used as a storage device, and to create a SDHC usb-hub where users can add 1 to 4 SD/SDHC cards to their Wii; the reason to create and support a particular hub is they could provide a device that people can buy for $15 that will enable people to expand their storage space as required, and since the Wii only works with the Nintendo hub there could be features which prevent piracy included into the hub.

The type of big-budget games that the "Snobcore" gamer tends to exclusively play have not been the most profitable in the industry for a very long time, and they have not made up the majority of the revenue produced in the industry either. With this in mind, lots of companies have continued to develop these games because there is a large enough market to create these games and turn a (very) healthy profit.

On top of that, these executives from large publishers that seem to be praised anytime they say something that matches what fanboys want to hear (and get bashed everythime they say something that fanboys don't want to hear) are actually pretty intelligent and understand how a market actually works. Just because Namco knows that they can get the best return on investment from producing DDR games does not mean that they will stop production of all other games to make more DDR games; they realize that there is only so much of a particular style of game that the market can really support, and therefore you need to produce a variety of games.

Hell, if expanding the market to include "Casual" gamers was going to kill off the "Core" market, wouldn't the core market have died off with the success of the Playstation or PS2?

"snobcore" : you know, I was stalking this thread waiting for someone to describe me with that word. Seems like a significant part of nintendo fanboy lingo these days.

To answer your point, I never said that casual games shouldn't be made but when you look at financials like EA's and their CEO's most recent rant, you know its wii-blown full steam and don't expect games like Battlefield to be coming to wii from them, its only going to be casual pandering all the way. Like you explained, these generate a healthy profit, hence, thats the quickest way to please investors because EA has nothing else to fall back on unlike Sony and M$.

Why would the core market have died off with the ps or ps2? Sure, there were casual titles, but there were also so many titles that I don't remember anytime in the reign of the ps/ps2 that core gamers were eagerly waiting to hear the announcement of another core title like what the wii is having right now? You see the difference. I for one am a HUGE JRPG fan and back then, I couldn't even keep up with the sheer amount of them that were released in that period. To this day, I'm still catching up!

I'm sorry but saying that ps/ps2 = wii is EPIC FAILURE. They just aren't the same. I don't remember anyone even been worried about casual games during that period because they just weren't as significant as they are now. The fact that all gamers talk about now on sites like this is the influx of casualware shows that there's trouble looming. Nintendo's E3 was enough to show what the heavyweights are all about now.

Unfortunately, your memory is quite flawed if you don't remember gamers waiting for games on the Playstation and PS2 ...

Even with the much lower development costs and shorter development cycles, it wasn't until about 2 years after the Playstation released that it really started to see a ton of support from third party publishers; and it wasn't until (about) its third or fourth year before its support was that crushing over what was available on other platforms.

Even though the PS2 was expected to be the dominant platform, it wasn't until its 15th month on the Japaneese market (9th or 10th month on the North American/European markets) where it really started seeing the steady flow of games that it became known for; Dreamcast fans used to use similar arguments to what HD fans use today to mock the PS2 for having a tiny and weak library.

The "Casual" argument wasn't used against the PS2 because the people who are currently using that argument favoured bashing similar games as "Kiddy-crap" ... Same immature frat-boys, different argument.