Ignorance is not bliss my friends. It's time to get educated. This post is a colaboration of evidence to the contrary of the very tired complaint on this forum that Nintendo no longer cares about the core gamer. I can't tell you how tired I am of hearing this argument, and it's constantly disproven everytime it's brought up with the numerous pieces of evidence to the contrary available. I figure at the very least the next time this ignorant argument is made, this post can be used as a link to quickly quiet it.
First Piece of Evidence: Nintendo's anounced and created games during this generation. Nintendo has been producing games for years, but lets take a look at what Nintendo has anounced between the Wii and DS (1st and second party). Some of these may be Japan only, or may not have been released in your region, but they are all Nintendo games taken from official anouncements and release lists. The DS is region free anyway so these are available for you to play. They will be categorized into Core and Casual. Many will appeal to both, but that's too much to bother separating. All you really need to know are the ones that don't appeal to core at all anyway:
Core:
DS 48 games:
Animal Crossing Wild World
Advance Wars DS
ASH: Archaic Sealed Heat
Chibi Robo: Park Patrol
Chousouju Mecha MG
Custom Robo Arena
Denetsu no Stafy 4
Diddy Kong Racing DS
DK: Jungle Climber
Elektroplankton
Elite Beat Agents
Elite Beat Agents 2
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates (that's right, Ninendo is publishing it)
Game and Watch Collection
Hotel Dusk: Room 215
Jet Impulse
Jump Super Stars
Jump Ultimate Stars
Kirby Canvas Curse
Kirby Squeak Squad
The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
Magical Starsign
Magnetica
Mario Hoops: 3 on 3
Mario Kart DS
Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time
Mario Party DS
Mario & Sonic at the Olympics
Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2
Meteos
Metroid Prime Pinball
Metroid Prime: Hunters
Tingle's Rosey Rupeeland (I have to admit I wish this didn't exist >_>)
New Super Mario Bros.
Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!
Planet Puzzle League
Picross DS
Pokemon Dash
Pokemon Diamond and Pearl
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon
Pokemon Ranger
Pokemon Trozei
Polarium
Project Hacker
Ridge Racer DS
Star Fox Command
Super Mario 64 DS
Super Princess Peach
Tenchu: Dark Secret
Tetris DS
Trace Memory
Trauma Center
True Swing Golf
Wander Donkey (don't ask)
Wario: Master of Disguise
WarioWare: Touched
Yoshi: Touch and Go
Yoshi's Island DS
Wii 25 games:
Animal Crossing Wii
Battalion Wars 2
Disaster: Day of Crisis
Donkey Kong: Barrel Blast
Endless Ocean
Excite Truck
Eyeshield 21
Fire Emblem: Goddess of Dawn
Golden Sun Wii
Kriby Wii
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Mario & Sonic at the Olympics
Mario Kart Wii
Mario Party 8
Mario Strikers Charged
Metroid Prime 3 Corruption
Pikmin Wii
Pokemon Battle Revolution
Project H.A.M.M.E.R. (May be canceled, but nothing official)
Super Mario Galaxy
Super Paper Mario
Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Super Swing Golf
Trauma Center: Second Opinion
WarioWare: Smooth Moves
Total: A whopping 73 games
Casual:
DS 12 games:
Big Brain Academy
Brain Age
Brain Age 2
Clubhouse Games
DS Easy Dictionary
Kanji Dictionary
Magic Taisen
Nintendogs
Something in Japanese: Training
Recipe Collection
Talking DS Cooking Navigator
English Training
Wii 5 games:
Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree
Wii Fit
Wii Music
Wii Play
Wii Sports
Total: a pathetic 13 games
Wow, what a list. Of course all these games may not appeal to you, and party games like Mario Party and WarioWare are really more of a both audience category, as do games like Wii Sports. How could it even be reasonable to claim that Nintendo is focusing on casual gamers when the total casual games is little more than half the Wii core games. Oh but wait, there's more!
Second Piece of Evidence: Comparison to last generation (credit to Stof for this). I am now going to compare the list of best selling Gamecube games to the currently anounced list of Wii games.
Mario Kart: Double Dash | Nintendo | 0.89 | 3.85 | 1.86 | 6.60 | |
Super Smash Bros Melee | Nintendo | 1.44 | 4.06 | 1.08 | 6.58 | |
Super Mario Sunshine | Nintendo | 0.87 | 3.73 | 1.31 | 5.91 | |
The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker | Nintendo | 0.89 | 2.44 | 1.05 | 4.38 | |
Luigi Mansion | Nintendo | 0.46 | 2.21 | 0.72 | 3.39 | |
Metroid Prime | Nintendo | 0.12 | 1.92 | 0.73 | 2.77 | |
Pokemon Collosseum | Nintendo | 0.71 | 1.17 | 0.62 | 2.50 | |
Animal Crossing | Nintendo | 0.66 | 1.68 | 0.15 | 2.49 | |
Mario Party 4 | Nintendo | 0.92 | 1.13 | 0.39 | 2.44 | |
Mario Party 5 | Nintendo | 0.73 | 0.96 | 0.36 | 2.05 | |
Paper Mario 2 | Nintendo | 0.46 | 1.23 | 0.26 | 1.95 | |
Starfox Adventures | Nintendo | 0.32 | 0.95 | 0.58 | 1.85 | |
Pikmin | Nintendo | 0.56 | 0.78 | 0.27 | 1.61 | |
Mario Party 6 | Nintendo | 0.60 | 0.85 | 0.11 | 1.56 | |
Kirbys Air Ride | Nintendo | 0.45 | 0.96 | 0.12 | 1.53 | |
Mario Party 7 | Nintendo | 0.47 | 0.87 | 0.11 | 1.45 | |
Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour | Nintendo | 0.25 | 1.03 | 0.15 | 1.43 | |
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes | Nintendo | 0.07 | 0.80 | 0.37 | 1.24 | |
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess | Nintendo | 0.04 | 0.85 | 0.28 | 1.17 | |
Pokemon XD | Nintendo | 0.35 | 0.58 | 0.21 | 1.14 | |
Mario Power Tennis | Nintendo | 0.46 | 0.52 | 0.15 | 1.13 | |
Super Mario Strikers | Nintendo | 0.21 | 0.43 | 0.42 | 1.06 | |
Donkey Konga | Nintendo | 0.46 | 0.43 | 0.17 | 1.06 | |
Pikmin 2 | Nintendo | 0.56 | 0.35 | 0.14 | 1.05 |
So, thanks to Stof we discovered that on this list of games, the ONLY ones without anounced sequels are Mario Power Tennis, Mario Golf, Luigi's Mansion, and Star Fox. In 8 months the Wii has anounced a sequel to all but 4 of the GC's best selling lifetime games. The speed of core game development for the Wii is unprecedented by Nintendo, and yet, somehow, Nintendo is attacked by their supposed "fans" for not meeting their expectations. What do you expect them to do? Crap gold bars and ship them to you?
Third Piece of Evidence: Recent Actions, Quotes. We are going to start with E3, as for some reason E3 created some serious backlash against Nintendo. Nintendo started the conference by going through all the biggest 3rd party Wii games. They anounced a new peripheral for core games, and that they are making their own secret core game project to be packaged with it. They then gave release dates and new trailers to all 3 of their biggest Wii games. They then showed Phantom Hourglass and Metroid Prime 3, 2 of their biggest core games comming out soon. Then they anounced 2 new games. New games Nintendo anounced at E3: Mario Kart Wii, the sequel to their best selling GC game, and Wii Fit, a new casual fitness game. So, at E3, Nintendo anounced 1 casual and 1 core game, and 1 secret core game, right after spending 75% of the conference trying to reassure the core gamer that they weren't being forgotten.
A couple quotes from Nintendo's E3 press conference:
"No matter how active the gamer, there is more than enough action comming to both the Nintendo DS and the Wii." -Reggie Fils-Aime
“It’s because of gamers that games have come as far as they have… it’s not Nintendo’s intent to alienate those people… We think we can involve everyone - people who played games in the past because the approach is so new, and people who were never gamers,” said Eiji Aonuma, Nintendo’s Zelda director.
But of course, actions speak louder than words. Look at Nintendo's current list of anounced titles above. What have they done as a company? The purchased Monolith Soft, a signifficant investment in the company. Obviously they wanted them to make dictionaries on the Wii though right? Nintendo also recently bought Nexon, a Korean MMORPG maker.
Summary:
It's 3 strikes and you're out folks. I don't know what else you want. Nintendo is publishing 6 times as many core games as they are casual games. They are doing it signifficantly faster than last generation. They have repeatedly said they won't drop the core gamer. They spent 75% of their E3 on the core gamer. They are acquiring studios to make games for the core gamer. There is NO EXCUSE for this argument. Find something else to complain about. Complain that you don't like Nintendo games, complain that you have never liked Nintendo games, I don't care, but you can not say Nintendo has stopped making games for, or even stopped focusing on making games for the core gamers. Nintendo has stated very clearly that they are making games for EVERYONE. They are trying to make games for core and casual gamers alike. If you don't like them, tough, but generalizing Nintendo's strategy with no evidence and insulting the company and the people who enjoy their quality games is not acceptable.