Concerning the "casual gaming" myth that keeps getting perpetuated: there is no such thing as a "casual game". The extremes are upmarket and downmarket, and the difference between that and the "hardcore and casual" rhetoric is immense.
Upmarket games are designed with the discriminating gamer in mind: they are complex, they require a large investment of time to play, they have significant barriers to entry (aforementioned complexity, overly thick manuals, necessity to have played some previous game, etc.), and they are geared towards giving a "sophisticated" experience.
Downmarket games are designed with the idea of attracting new gamers: they are simple, require little time investment to play, have virtually no barriers to entry (aforementioned simplicity, don't need to read the manual, can pick it up and play it any time, etc.), and are geared towards giving a "valued" experience.
These are the true extremes which matter to normal consumers, and of course there are a lot of games that bridge the gap between them. A consumer wanting to get into design is not going to buy LittleBigPlanet. It's far too complex to build anything with it, requires a vast time investment to build anything even remotely interesting, and has controls that are far from intuitive (lots of menu navigation to do anything, and all with icons instead of descriptions, meaning you'll have to practically memorize the manual to know what to do).
LBP is not geared towards the "valued" experience, it is geared towards the "sophisticated" experience. If it were after a "valued" experience, it would eschew all unnecessary complexities (complex physics engine, necessity to construct things manually, overly complex menu systems, etc.) in favor of a simple and effective interface that anybody could intuitively grasp within minutes (if not seconds) of picking the game up.
Sky Render - Sanity is for the weak.
