| mortono said: [...] I'm glad when I hear these so-called core Nintendo fans having a fit because Nintendo has "abandoned" them. Oh boo-hoo! What really happened is that they abandoned Nintendo. The N64 and Gamecube sold a dismal amount of units. Nintendo was on the verge of exiting the hardware market in 2004, and if it wasn't for the Wii and DS, that's probably what would have happened. The Wii is really a return to NES values. The NES was considered a mass market system. It wasn't targeting gamers, it was targeting families just like the Wii is doing. The NES had the Power Pad (now called Wii Fit), the NES Sports games (now called Wii Sports), and Super Mario Bros (now called New Super Mario Bros). This is why the Wii has been successful. It is getting back to the audience that has been "abandoned" since the NES. Can you, poor core gamer, even imagine what it's like to be abandoned for 20 years? And to core gamers who think the audience on Wii consists of morons that bought the system as an impulse buy just to be "trendy", that is a complete stereotype and you couldn't be more wrong. If anything, that is a better description of the core audience that lines up at midnight launches and buys games before they even come out. The audience that bought the Wii did so because they saw legitimate quality in the console. It became "trendy" because the mass market actually saw value in video games that didn't exist before. The Wii, with it's focus on local multiplayer and easy/fun/short gameplay, is still sitting in many people's living rooms and is still being used frequently (check the Nielsen report). The fever that caused the Wii to be sold out for 2 years may be gone, but that doesn't mean the Wii is headed for an early grave. Nintendo will not be regretting their abandonment of those poor core gamers anytime in the near future. And, in fact, it's not like they've completely abandoned that audience. They are still making great games for the core audience, but like I said, it's the core audience who has abandoned Nintendo.
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If Nintendo is fine with all this, it should keep on following its way. Who doesn't like it can buy from someone else. Nintendo is happy, someone else is happy, former Nintendo users are less happy, but who cares?
