Will Microsoft steal the casual crowd from Nintendo?

[Mensrea]

Well I think Nintendo is pushing for the casuals, but until the Wii U is 250 or less and the Wii is discontinued, no one will care. I have two sets of grandparents, who just bough Wiis to try out Wii sports, there is no way they are paying 350 dollars for a new system that plays updated iterations of games like Wii Fit that they already have, yet barely touch. I have friends who are casual gamers, and they went through the Wii craze, but ultimately they were disappointed and their ways stagnate in a closet.

Wii U fit will be a revelation for Nintendo in terms of what audience they need to push for. It's a game with little to no core gamer appeal, the Wii U has 2.5 million userbase right now that will barely be around 3 million when Wii U fit launches, and any casuals who did jump onboard will already have Wii Fit in their homes, and it will be fully playable on their Wii U. Wii U fit will not sell more than a million units by 2014.

Microsoft is in a different position. Kinect was quite successful, and is still a focus for them. I think the fact that it's an add on might have confused said casuals, and confusion is something that doesn't sell (See Wii U). So if Microsoft launches their Nextbox with an updated kinect, and a strong advertising campaign, I think they could easily steal away that casual market that Nintendo previously appealed to.

I don't think that casual gaming is dead, Tablets and Smartphones do have a lot of casual players, but motion controlled consoles offer things to them that their tablets and smartphones can't. First off, local multiplayer is essential, and motion that requires space is also a big appeal. Games like just dance simply couldn't be done on tablets. Games like Wii and Kinect Sports, Mario Kart, and NSMB are all unavailable on tablets and smartphones.

Nintendo will gather a fairly large casual base, but Microsoft will lure a bigger one into it's green clutches.