Nintendo has lost the core market this generation

[Mr Khan]

theprof00 said:

The Ghost of RubangB said:
If hardcore gaming isn't a sustainable business model during a global economic meltdown, hardcore gaming will die. I won't miss it. Nintendo won't miss it. The future of gaming won't miss it.

It will either become sustainable or die. To become sustainable it either needs to sell more (by getting dumbed down for the masses), or cost less to make (by not having millions spent on HD visuals). If that scares you, then you need to buy millions of copies of every hardcore game that gets made to keep these companies in business.

Once graphical development hits the wall, then it will happen. We are close to it. Graphics are close to their peak. I give it one more generation. Then you can watch as the costs drop and profits soar and you can then realize that the hardcore took gaming to the precipice of visuals in the shortest amount of time and everything was awesome.

Without the hardcore, we'd be playing SMG on an N64.

I think that's a fairly disingenuous comment to make, and one that has been made before "well if no-one cares about graphics, we would be stuck on the NES (or whatever lower console of choice you can think of)" The key issue is that graphics were the only way of differentiating consoles before. Technical capabilities. Now consoles can do more (and that isn't just about motion control. For all three competitors, this has been the Interface Revolution. It's easier to set consoles apart.)