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

[Aielyn]

Antabus said:

Aielyn said:

"Core" refers to the people who make the majority of purchases on your console. It is a term referring to business, to the market. The "Core Market" is, essentially, the portion of the market that the company's products are primarily aimed at.

This. HD consoles and Wii have different core customers.

I suspect that you've misunderstood.

There is no category of gamers that are inherently part of, or not part of, the "core" for any console. While a larger part of the core for the PS3 and 360 will be FPS fans, the core spreads over all genres, all styles of play, etc. Indeed, the core for a console typically do not restrict themselves to a single genre or group of genres, and instead will buy a broad variety of games.

For instance, I'm probably part of the core on the Wii. I own a diverse collection including Call of Duty: World at War, No More Heroes, Epic Mickey, Dewy's Adventure, and Wii Music, just to name a few. I bought the system at launch. My collection, if I weren't financially limited right now (basically, for the last year, I haven't bought myself a game, the few games I've gotten have been gifts) and lacking in free time, would probably be well over 50 games by now. One cannot target the core of the console, except by making quality games.

Meanwhile, the "Core Market" varies from developer to developer, based on the people who are most likely to buy a game from that developer. It generally cannot be neatly pigeonholed, though, unless the developer has positioned themselves firmly within a niche - in which case, they're (the developer, not the core market) going to die a slow, painful death.