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Mummelmann on 26 January 2013
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Soleron said:

maximrace said:
I think it's easy to understand. There is a marketshift towards apps.

Oh really? Show me the big app game company's balance sheets.

Most core gamers have the hdtwins and are waiting for the nextgen.

Why wait? Aren't all the games they like out now? Why will next gen's games suddenly be attractive if current ones are not?

The casual gamer who bought the wii, psp or ds isn't interested in gaming anymore because they have a tablet/ smartphone to game on.

Are they spending the same amount of money on it? What you're actually seeing is $60 games no longer being worth it so people will take what they can get for 99c or free. That doesn't amount to actually not wanting console games, it means the ones they do want don't exist. And when they DO exist (CoD, Minecraft, Animal Crossing 3DS) suddenly we see lots of sales out of nowhere.

It's market apathy, not market shift.

But casuals aren't that important for a core gaming console.

Kinect didn't sell 20m then?

So the nextbox/ ps 4 should do allright if they are aimed a tthe core market.

wasn't the Wii U aimed at the core market?




Companies like Zynga show how profitable the casual social/tablet/phone market can be, they whizzed past EA in profits and revenue in about four years. CSR Racing on iTunes is making the developer about 12.000.000$ every month,  GREE company had over 500.000.000$ in profits in 2012, DeNA reported over 700.000.000$ profits for 2012, there are many examples such as this.

The part about market apathy, I can agree with, the diverging market is confusing to both consumer and developer and people are fond of grabbing the cheapest deals (but that's nothing new).

Kinect sold 20 million but is completely irrelevant in gaming today, much like Wii-mote, its practical application is all but worthless and it never took off at all where it could have actually made an inudstry impact; the PC. The casual crowd isn't important for a core console, that's in the very nature of the console itself. If you don't cater to casuals then casuals won't matter, that's pretty much a given.

The Wii U is aimed at both the casual and core market, which will likely be it's great undoing, this is the core of the problem that Nintendo faces. The core market is largely satisfied on the older HD consoles and the lack of good 3rd party support is really hurting Nintendo and, meanwhile, the casuals have fled to social/tablet/phone gaming and will likely stay there (its not merely coincidence that the Wii's great fall and the massive rise of phones and tablets and social games happened at the same time).

Casual oriented consoles will not succeed in the current market atmosphere, the tablets and phones will eat them alive. Next on the menu are handheld consoles dedicated to gaming, these devices will meet their end at the hands of this very same market segment within a relatively short period of time.

If MS and Sony actively pursue casual gamers with their next consoles, or, even worse, go for both casual and core gamers, they will fall really hard on their ass and lose a lot of momentum from this generation, something neither can afford if; A: Sony want to stay in business with their gaming section and, B: MS want to conquer the living room as an entertainment arena.