Wii "gamers" generally aren't gamers at all and got the Wii as an Xmas present for some familiy fun but other than that they don't get used much, except for times of celebration when the family are round and there's nothing todo...Then they purchase a top quality nintendo title. (Because that's all they know).

For some reason t seems to be blaspheme to say this? It's obviously referring to the general demographic of Wii owners, sure there are people like some on the forums here that play it as an actual games console but proportionately we must be talking less than 5% (I don't know anyone who plays the Wii like a games console yet I know a good 30 people who own a Wii)

I think this image puts people off buying one, you know the people who actually want a game console.

*play like a game console - plonk down 4-5 hours without thinking about it.

In all honesty doesn't all the motion control mlarky just make it harder to like...I want a control pad! I know you can get one but how many games can actually be played properly with one?

5%? That would be around 3.25 million Wii owners. If you look at the data on the Nintendo channel you'll see that "gamer" games do get long gaming sessions, and sales for games like Zelda and Smash Bros. suggest a figure higher than the one you're suggesting. That's not to say that "traditional" gamers aren't in the minority on the Wii - I just don't think they're quite the minority you present them as.

I thought I better post here with Makka Pakka.

On topic: I think your post has been argued out of existence years ago. Just check out the Nintendo Channel stats for time played on games and look at the game attach rate.

It should also be mentioned that 'traditional' gamers were in a huge minority on PS2 as well. There aren't that many 'traditional' gamers unless you count the entire teen-20-something male audience. I don't. I see most of them as casual gamers. Today it will be MW2 and Halo, back in the SNES era it would have been Street Fighter 2 and Mario Kart. They may spend hundreds of hours on them, but they don't buy much else.

it's not 5%

maybe when the Wii was released it was 5%, because people got Wii to play Wii Sports with their family and friends, Wii Sports was just used by Nintendo to make people (everyone as Nintendo said!?) buy Wii, see how fun it is and at the same time experience the motion controls

a % from everyone (core gamers) got Zelda (and is not 5%)

since many people got Wii and they enjoyed Wii Sports, they release more and more great games, so people that never played games before like the Wii, also many people prefer their kids to play Wii rather than the traditional Ps3 as Wii involves more... movement

nintendo own core gamers probably 7-15 millions.

but it's not rocket science wii fit , sport, play userbase it's more than half of wii install bae,

Microsoft paycheck watch today people.

Being that for a game to sell more than 5 Million copies it needed (fairly) massive cross-over appeal into casual and non-traditional gamers in the last generation even though 170 Million consoles were sold, I really don’t think that the core-gamer market has really ever been the majority of gamers on any console.

Lol @ OP.

Wow... where to begin on this... I don't know if there is something worthwhile discussing here that hasn't already been put to rest.... ugh...

The gamer community (by this I mean people who know and buy many games, not just the few names they've heard about) has always been a small part of the public. Almost every people I know who has a gaming console don't know anything about videogames, and only buy a game from time to time, generally the "game of the moment" that is advertised everywhere. And this includes Wii owners of course, but also 360 and PS3 owners. I see evidence of that everyday.

At work, I have a few colleagues who game, and they all have a PS3. Well, they love it but they still spend all their time on WoW... And when they actually buy and play PS3 games, it's CoD, Uncharted 2, Assassin's Creed, and I'm pretty sure their next game will be GT5. Last time we talked about videogames, they where mocking the Wii ("graphics suck", "the games are stupid", "the GPU can't display blood"). I told them about Muramasa, Madworld, HotD Overkill, they didn't know any of these games. I mentioned RE4 Wii, they didn't even know about this one... Actually all they knew was Wii Sports, Raving Rabbids, Wii Fit and Mario Kart.

Of course all of this is anecdotic, but though there are differences, most of the PS3 owners I know are like this. And it's the same with 360 owners. People happen to know and buy only a few games. Then if you want more evidence of this, look at the attach rates for any console ever released. I don't think anyone can call him a gamer he buys 10 new games in the whole lifespan of a console. That's about 2 games a year.