"Gaming media" is crap, basically. They don't know what to do with Wii games because they're too busy drooling over the next eye-candy-packed shooter to notice a simple, fun party game.
Wii Sports, for example, is the Harry Potter of video games - accessible by everyone, loads of fun, and it doesn't pretend to be anything more than that. Gaming reviewers, meanwhile, are the equivalent of hard-core literature nerds who turn their noses up at anything that isn't a niche product geared toward their small, elitist subset. They don't like Wii Sports because it's not flashy, realistic, and twitchy, just like lit-nerds don't like Potter because it isn't James Joyce. Both miss the point.
You can see the disconnect wherever you go among hard-core gamers, even with really good games. (If I hear another person complain that Super Mario Galaxy is "too linear," I swear I'll choke them to death.)
"'Casual games' are something the 'Game Industry' invented to explain away the Wii success instead of actually listening or looking at what Nintendo did. There is no 'casual strategy' from Nintendo. 'Accessible strategy', yes, but ‘casual gamers’ is just the 'Game Industry''s polite way of saying what they feel: 'retarded gamers'."
-Sean Malstrom
