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.

Bless your heart. May this stop the fighting.

OBJECTION!

Ignorance IS bliss, and I expect most anti-Nintendo fans to dismiss your post as tripe by simply ignoring it outright. Of course, there will be the anti-Nintendo zealots who will come in here to (attempt to) tear you a new one - can't wait to see this aftermath...

But fact is fact.

Well said naznatips, too bad I'm not a hardcore gamer anymore because I play Dance Dance Revolution

:(



:P

hehe that's fine.  People can complain and moan about Nintendo all they want, I just dislike when generalizations are made based on false information and personal opinions.  

http://objection.mrdictionary.net/go.php?n=2062679

DDR is so hardcore. i try my best to get the S+ score on every song. (though only successful on 10% of them).

most games defined "hardcore" happen just for the 16-25 male audience. there's a perception that if a game has 100% of its audience in the 16-25 male audience playing, then it can't be any more hardcore. if it's 50%, it's less hardcore, even if it's something like super mario galaxy which will have MORE 16-25 males playing the game anyhow.

that's what i currently think. and it's this perception that led to this great hardcore vs non-hardcore war. there are also the factors like "traditional games" and stuff, but i think this psychology has not been brought up previously.

input please! together, we'll nail just what what people mean when they say "hardcore".

Everytime I hear "hardcore" I think of this

Haha I think that too. That's why I prefer the term "Core gamer." I don't know what the heck "hardcore" is, but core gamers are just that. The core of the industry. They are the gamers who look for challenge and depth in their games. They look for classics, old games, good games, weird games, unique games, and just games in general. They are in gaming to have a good time, to be entertained, to be challenged, and to enjoy themselves with their favorite characters. A core gamer can truthfully play any degree of game, though I must admit that something like a handheld dictionary doesn't do a whole lot for the majority of them. Still, Wii Sports can certainly be enjoyable to both core and casual gamers.