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HappySqurriel on 20 January 2009
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BengaBenga said:
HappySqurriel said:

One thing I find particularly interesting is that people use their own personal assumptions to conclude that "Casual" gamers are mostly new to gaming and that they will eventually graduate to "Hardcore" games ...

I could be wrong but I suspect that if we had complete data from previous generations, added up multiplatform releases, and then listed games that sold more than 250,000 units we would see that what people define as "Casual" gaming has been huge for quite some time.

 

Just check the PS2 Top 50. Casual gaming was basically invented by PlayStation (hence the hatred from Sega, Nintendo and PC gamers that Sony killed hardcore gaming when the PS1 took off. Funny...).

http://vgchartz.com/games/index.php?&results=50&name=&console=PS2&keyword=&publisher=&genre=&order=Sales&boxart=Both&showdeleted=&region=All&alphasort=

True enough ... but I was thinking in much broader terms.

While the Playstation and Gameboy systems have had massive success by building libraries of games that would be called "Casual" today, most consoles and the PC have seen a lot of successful "Casual" games (sold 125,000+ copies); and there has been to of flash games that have satisfied gamers throughout the years. While I don't have numbers to back it up, I suspect games like The Sims have nearly as large of an audience as most of the biggest "Hardcore" games, and these kinds of gamers were mostly ignored heading into this generation.