| Mr Khan said:
You seem to strike closer to the definition. I would call your definition the "enthusiast" or "hobbyist" gamer, one that takes the entertainment medium and makes it into a proper hobby (much as how everyone can own movies, perhaps an extensive collection of movies, but not necessarily be a movie buff. The difference is in dedication and how one approaches the activity), but the enthusiast gamer works only in small capacities, the definition of a vocal minority, and there is where your definition based on sales is flawed. Brawl and Halo are mainstream games, as are Call of Duty and New Super Mario Bros. NSMBWii also makes overtures to the expanded audience, a market on the periphery of the mainstream which is where we find the elusive, so-called "casual" gamer Certain types of mainstream gamers disliked the Wii, as well as a dedicated core of haters amongst the enthusiasts, though many in the enthusiast subgroup also embraced the Wii quite strongly For identity purposes, the Wii haters in the media boiled it down to a simple dichotomy, one that has skewed our perceptions ever since, leading to all this time i have spent arguing those who still labor under the fallacious dichotomy here today. |
Though flawed, it is one of the only measures we have, added to forum goer count for specialized forums (smashboards), online services (battle.net, live) and a few other measures. That's why I use it in tandem with the others. All in all the figures for strict harcore dedication would, in my humble view, not exceed much higher than 10 million people per plat...
But still, good post ;)
@italics That's why I mentioned the looser and stricter flavors of judgement, and explained it in dept. For Smash, I conceded the appeal to casual to a certain extent in one of my prior posts, and that goes for Halo too as you mentioned. I conceded that here. It doesn't affect the barometer's power to indicate since the appeal to casual affects both Brawl and Halo, and to a relatively small extent as far as I understand.
@underlined I share the sentiment. Too bad it took us this long to figure it out. Lesson learnt for next time in my book.
