Has Nintendo Lost the Hardcore Gamer? article by IGN

[Stever89]

Picko said:

Stever89 said:

Star Scream said:

Gamerace said:
Ah the cries of the so-called hardcore gamers as their dominance of the market is washed away by the whims and fancies of little girls, soccer moms and seniors.

 

I'm hardly hardcore, but that's nothing to be proud. Lowest common denominator is always trash.

 

There's nothing wrong with other types of people getting into gaming. The world's not going to end, "hardcore" games are not going to disappear or reduce in quality or quantity... everyone acts like since the industry is expanding companies will have fewer "hardcore" games because they will make more "casual" games... that won't happen. They hire more people, and produce more games. Every market does this (at least markets that grow), and new companies emerge. Only when "hardcore" gamers stop buying so-called "hardcore" games will those types of games stop being made.

There's more than enough room for everyone. ALl this does is make people more accpetable to gaming (which is good because politicians may be more easy with regulations... we can hope), and keeps the market healthy. I doubt many here would rather see gaming disappear than see it expand to the more "non-gamers" and "casuals." Note though that "casuals" have been around since the PS1 era... Sony was the one brought them in the first place. The SNES was probably the last true "hardcore" gamers system... since back then it was still consider niche. Let's not even go into how Sony and Microsoft (especially Sony) advertise their systems as "multimedia centers." They are just asking for all those people that don't play games often to buy their system for non-gaming reasons, such as blu-ray. Course, price is a bit high... but oh well. Let's NOT get into a price discussion though! I don't have the strength.

 

 

I agree with the first part of your first paragraph. However it could be considered a problem if other groups feel that there is little left for them, which appears to be how they feel. The second part is a little more questionable - if the casual audience is so much bigger than the hardcore (or more traditional) audience then companies will dedicate larger resources towards the casual audience. This isn't a problem when the games are Mario and the like, which have both casual and hardcore appeal (and are typically of a high quality) but in a lot of cases this has lead to a declining quality of games - which is the third party problem that many have. An issue here is that there is little incentive for companies to improve the quality of their casual software - because there is a belief (and it isn't unwarranted) that casual gamers are less aware of quality.

(Oh and for the record, the Dreamcast was the last great hardcore system)

 

I was going to mention the Dreamcast, because it probably is... but decided against it.

And can I get an example of an industry that introduced a new genres and immediately (or even over a course of a long time) completely abandoned the old genres, even when there was demand for such genres?

The movie industry, for example, still does all sorts of high quality genres, from action, to romance, to musicals, to fantasy, etc. They don't do silent movies anymore though. Not sure how many people miss those. The music industry has tons of genres (or only 3 or 4 depending on how you look at it, and many sub-genres...), and I don't think there's a lack of quality songs for anyone interested in any particular genre.

Basically, if every single company in the world moved over to these "casual" games (that don't really exsist if you ask me, they are "social games," and they don't have to be the mini-game fest that most "casual" games are [most are not Nintendo games... ] but that's another discussion), then I'll be the first to create the most "hardcore" company EVER because there will be so much demand for it, and so littly supply, every single game will be a hit. I would expect them to have to be high quality, because we all know how "hardcore" users don't buy bad games. Who ever wants in, let me know. We'll be millionaires overnight probably.

Also, since "casuals" buy fewer games (or spend more time completing a game...), and with more competion in that genre, all those terrible companies who abondened the "hardcore" will be destroyed, like EA, Ubisoft, SE, all of them, wasting their money on that. So it'll be Nintendo (who makes money on hardware and doesn't fall for thise "casual" phase), and my company, and we will rule the gaming world!!! Who's with me?

In summary, free markets works in most industries, I see no reason for it not to work in gaming. As long as YOU (the "hardcore" gamer) demands it, they will supply it.

 

Edit: to Valkyria00- It's late and spell checker isn't working for some reason. lol