I don't think the problem is Nintendo fans hoping for the downfall of hardcore gaming, i think that Nintendo recognised that hardcore gamers don't necessarily like violent games.
For all the people who played Halo, i can bet that games like minesweeper, solitaire, tetris, chess, scrabble, sudoku or bejeweled have clocked twice (if not more) the hours of Halo. My mom, for example, won't not be considered a hardcore games, but she spends over twenty hours a week playing the games like the ones i mentioned on her PC. Since she got a DS last year, she must have clocked thousands of hours on it playing games like Brain Training and Picross. To some these games may be considered shovelware, but to my mom, Halo, and even Mario platformers are shovelware, and Picross is hardcore gaming.
So my question is who is the hardcore gamer? I can promise you that my mom will have clocked in more gaming hours in her life than anyone under 25. Unfortunately, until the DS and now the Wii, no console was catering to her hardcore demands.
So may it is not that we are seeing hardcore gaming failing, but maybe hardcore gaming is finally on the rise!!!
Member of the Pikmin Fan Club
