Despite no one was able to provide any definition of "core" people still using it in, manipulating it in favour of own arguments ^_^
Well, I stick with traditional definition that is true for any industry and I believe that was initial meaning of the word. Though later it became a catchy word among various gamers blogs, forums etc. and now some people even use it as a mesure of appreciation (i.e. core = good, smart, complex, casual = bad, dumb, simple etc.). As we may see term definition was watered down in favour of own arguments, and it no longer can be used as smth that universally accepted. It really doesn't matter how you label certain phenomena. But it's vital to define it, if you want to help others understand you, otherwise you may arguing over different matters.
One of the possible and most common definitions... Core customer is a customer who spend relatively more on purchasing certain group of products compared to other customers at a given period of time. Yeah, that easy. To further explanations...
Those (core) are usually satisfied and as a result - returning customers. Speaking about gaming industry we may say that there're a core cutomers of certain gaming franchise (really, any will do... Madden, Pokemon, Imagine series etc.), as well as gaming in general. For instance, core customers of Imagine series are young girls, teenage boys and young males are core customers of Madden franchise etc. If we take gaming in general, teenage boys and young male usually represent returning, core customers with high brand loyalty. While females and older male and female customers at this point usually belongs to expanded audience for gaming in general. Every industry building up it's customer base on core customers, as well every industry looking for ways to expand it's influence, otherwise it dies. Industry evolving at faster pace if it accumulates a lot of returning, satisfied, i.e. core customers that buys product more often, spending more cash. At the same time surviving only on core customers could be problematic, casual customers is the key for growth due to their massive amount. Eventually some of the casual customers could be transformed into core if they'll found a product, that they've used casually, appealing enough to spend some extra money on it.* All of this is kinda obvious, isn't it?
You may use this definition if you like or make your own and use it in favour your own arguments ;) For example, here's one of the effect of this definition... according to what I've said above, you may not for sure say that PSP is monopolizing core gamers. In fact it could be vice-versa actually as long as DS attach rate > PSP attach rate (obviously DS users buys more software per unit, so they're in general "more core" than PSP users).
//*And I hope it will eventually happen in gaming industry thanks to the work that has been done in these few years. New audience will eventually form a NEW demand that should be satisfied, wiping out a great amount of traditional games, traditional gameplay and traditional themes in games. And gaming industry, gaming culture wouldn't be considerend as a bunch of adolescent, pubertal idiots for outsiders. Radical way, but hey... it's a revolution after all ;)
