| Mazty said: So instead of pretending the Wii and Xbox had the same market, realise they didn't. |
You lost me. I have tons of friends who have both a Wii and an XBox. Friends who play both Mario Kart and Skyrim, Call of Duty and Kinect Star Wars. Zelda and Wii Play. Smash Bros and Wii Sports Resort. Kirby's Epic Yarn and Mass Effect.
Sometimes it's convenient to simplify the market into distinct groups. Sometimes it's just easier to say, "This game is designed to appeal more to casual gamers," than to specify exactly what that means. But it's a shortcut. Male and female, Australian and French, under 13 and over 50 -- those are demographics. There is no simple division between "core" and "casual" gamers, and the existence of such demographics is an illusion. A single person cannot be both 15 and 34, and a single person (excepting rarities) cannot be both male and female. But it is extremely common for people to play a wide variety of games, including those labeled both "core" and "casual."
Audiophiles have nothing to do with what we're talking about. They need not be elitist, but I'm calling YOU an elitist because you clearly believe that your tastes are somehow more valuable than those of other consumers. ("Games and consoles shouldn't be focused on [casual gamers].") It's like you don't want the industry to make free money. You would dismiss as gimmicks some of the best-selling video games of all time. What do you care if tens of millions of people love playing Wii Sports Resort? By dismissing their tastes, you're effectively telling them that they're wrong for enjoying a certain product, and you're telling Nintendo that they were wrong for creating that product. Meanwhile, Nintendo looks at their financial reports, and sees that their "casual"-oriented games are among their best-selling.
Again, the so-called "casual" market has actually proven to be more sustainable than the "core" market you describe. That's because "casual" games, by their nature, have wider appeal than "core" games, which are often considered niche. Compare the appeal of Super Mario Bros or Call of Duty to that of Darksiders or Infamous. Of course the "casual" games sell better -- their target demographic is enormous. And they will always sell better, because developers aren't going to change their "core" games to appeal to that wider audience, and that's exactly how it should be. Some games will be blockbusters, some games won't. It works pretty similarly in the film industry.
The "casual" market has been around much longer than you think it has. The NES managed to succeed in America basically because of that audience -- it was marketed as an entertainment system, not just as a game console. It appealed even to people who weren't terribly interested in video games. This happened again 15 years later when a whole bunch of people bought a console called the PlayStation 2 just because it was the cheapest DVD player on the market, regardless of whether or not they cared about video games. Like it or not, the "casual" market has been saving this industry's ass on a regular basis for the past 26 years.
"I don't want a single publisher thinking that I'll pay twice for the same game." -- that's a shame, because many publishers already KNOW they can squeeze significantly more money out of their consumers through DLC. You may not be buying a single game twice, but you're paying double for one game, and isn't that just as bad?
