Core or Casual: Which of the two markets are more important/desirable?

[SvennoJ]

Chrizum said:

Hardcore gamers < 5% of the market
Mainstream > 95% of the market

Enough said.

Depends how many games do casual gamers buy over the lifetime of the console, as opposed to the hardcore. I buy over 30 games a year. (including downloadable titles)

For the hardware manufacturer it's easy, get the casual crowd interested as soon as you make a profit on the console. For 3rd party developers it's a much bigger risk targeting the casual crowd. See kinect, a huge success, but only a few software titles benefit from the success.