The origin of "casual/hardcore gamers" and other industry bullshit.

[DonFerrari]

kabamarutr said:

DonFerrari said:
And apparently the gaming industrie have been growing with these so called hardcores from PS1 100M to PS2 160M to PS3+X360 currently at 160M... while going casual Nintendo have hit just one time 100M but not the same level of SW attach ratio... so why would pubs give more attention to "hardcores"??

I'm so tired of the victimism (from feminists and some winny gammers)... they try to invert logic, like its devs fault for not catering for them and not them investing in devs that cater... if devs get their money from their supporters for those kind of games why would they allienate the granted buyers to try and cater to people that don't know why they buy and what to buy?

I agree with this and will add some.

Indeed, the gaming industry has been growing. Just add the total sales for each generation and you will see it clearly. The allocation of those new entries demonstrates the gaming style of preference. Clearly there is a grand amount of people out there who want to play "casually". This does not mean Nintendo. It means that when they get home after a tiring day, they need to settle and relax with a game that does not require much on behalf of the player. Some simple arcade, a mindless shooter or whatever fits your bill.

We then come to a point where the industry seeks what those people like to play. Is it shooters? Do shooters sell? They will mass-produce them until they become unprofitable again. Is it motion games, with cameras or other devices? The market will be flooded with those. If the analysts believe that the profit will be worth it, whole console developping strategies will be based on it (see XB1 and Kinect2).

We need to understand that the industry is a soulless and money eating beast (and rightly so). They don't care what "the few" like. They will fork out what people buys most -> what will bring them more profit. I, myself, hate this. I tend to cling to indie games which bring me the nostalgia of the "old school": the 8-bit and 16-bit. But I cannot expect the industry to go back to the late 80s.

To conclude, such was Nintendo's decision regarding Wii. They anticipated that motion sensing is what people are going to go crazy about and invested on it. They wanted the money and they succeeded. Such was their success, that the other two dropped the "mantle of seriousness" and set sail to the same direction. Because in that direction lied the pot of gold, at least at the time.

You were spot on... market sell and develop to what they think is profitable and don't care much about to who they sell just how much it sell... marketing will always try to put their product with a nice image, sometimes that image would be hardcore and other would be seem as casual (but usually that is more related to our bias on the subject than what the market really wants).

I don't see it as inteligent to just try to sell to minorities and hope to profit instead to sell to majority and broaden the chance of sucess... and if Ninty is being left aside they should be the ones trying to change their images not the devs.