Project Cafe/3DS and the abandoning of the consumer

[zarx]

Kenryoku_Maxis said:

zarx said:

For an example of the casual vs core gamer devide check this 

 

"Games Purchase

Almost 40% of people playing games have not bought or been given a game for themselves in the last 12 months, they are playing the games others have bought 14% of gamers are buying more than 3 games a year together this group account for 56% of all games purchases

Numbers of purchases are highest in the UFIGS countries, purchases range from 2.7 games each in the UK to 1.4 games each in North Eastern Europe"

http://english.safe.si/uploadi/editor/1298982651ISFE_Consumer_Survey_2010.pdf

 

 

The core group are the 14% and the casual group are the rest which market do you think is a better market to have? 

Also axt113 you seem to have skiped my last 2 posts lol

Considering its 56% of the market, focusing on the 'core' alone will not make you sell the best.  Also, consider the fact that no game will ever appeal to 56% of the market.

And considering the next console, Nintendo will most likely try to appeal to both the 'core' and 'casual' gamers at the same time.  Just like the PS2 did.  Its taking a chance, but since they're coming out before the other next gen systems and have a huge established base with the Wii, they could pull it off.

Appealing to 56% of the market with one game is not the point 

Of course you want both markets but for a platform holder that gets a licensing fee for every game sold attracting the 14% of the potential audience to your console with games like Galaxy and other: M etc if you can pull it off is more valuable in the long run than getting a fraction of the other 76% of the market as they will buy less games in the future. Ideally you will have a good number of core gamers that will consistently buy software as well as a group of casual gamers that will buy one or two games but there are so many of them you can get successes like Mario kart, NSMB Wii, Wii sports, GTA VC etc and drive hardware from 1 or 2 games. The consoles that have struck the best balance are the NES, SNES, Playstation and the PS2, This generation the Wii got most of the casuals and very few core gamers and that led to great hardware sales and some titles with outstanding sales but an overall software ecosystem that is weak meaning outside of a few breakout titles games don't sell that well. The PS3 and 360 got most of the core and few casuals and so they have slower hardware sales and fewer truly breakout titles (COD being the only real exception) but a generally more healthy game sales market where a broad range of titles thrived. 

Nintendo knows this so next gen they are trying to get third parties and the core on board which means building hype and traditional control scheme bundled with the console, while I am sure still trying to keep the more casual market happy. If they can pull it off then they will have a PS2 on their hands a console that sells tones of hardware and a broad range of software as well as having a few breakout successes. Whether they can do that is the question, they tried and failed the mix with the N64, NGC and the Wii.

Of course now that is where the OPs argument brakes down as he thinks that scraping all titles that attract the core and focusing entirely on games aimed at the 76% of the market that bus only 34% of the games when everyone is now trying to attract those gamers (Kinect, Move, Apple etc etc) is better than trying to strike a balance.