| BuckStud said: If you don't like Nintendo for whatever reason, that's your prerogative, but you have to respect the fact that they have kept our favorite hobby mainstream. "Hardcore" players simply are not enough to sustain the industry on their own. |
It appears like you are contrasting "hardcore gaming" with Nintendo gaming, so by "hardcore" I assume you mean all non-Nintendo games. If that's your definition of "hardcore", then I largely disagree. Since the 5th generation to now, non-Nintendo games have done much better than Nintendo at sustaining the industry. Since their entry into the market, Nintendo has been cursed with steadily declining market reach, excluding the Wii, while non-Nintendo gaming has grown stronger.
Even during the 7th generation, non-Nintendo products reached a larger audience (PS3 & 360 combined instalbase), and were much more durable while the Wii fatigued; which is a testimate to their sustainability. The only time Nintendo was the indisputable king of gaming was during the NES and SNES. Since then, a certain non-Nintendo company has broadened the industry to much wider audiences than Nintendo ever has. It's fair to say that this company has pushed gaming to much further heights.
Software sales are obviously going to be higher for Nintendo games, but that doesn't do much to support your point. That doesn't show that Nintendo has pushed gaming further than other companies; it just shows that their strategy results in a higher software:hardware ratio, which doesn't mean much when determining who has pushed the market further. To see who has pushed the market further, we should look at hardware sales since they are a better determinant of install base. In which case, Nintendo is clearly not the King.
