You made an excellent point with the "bored gamer" comment in that thread. I agree 100%.
I've had this argument with others, and it is, of course, entirely based on perception, but from my experience, last decades "hardcore gamer" got left behind in the wash of the PlayStation.
There are 50 million "80s kids" that grew up with a Nintendo in their home. They mostly followed Ninty to the SNES in the early 90s. However, around the time the next gen in consoles rolled out, with the 3DO, Jag, and eventually the PS1 and Saturn, this group did not follow to those consoles. This group graduated high school and went to college, and almost completely jumped to the PC after experiencing a "eureka moment" upon seeing shareware games like Doom, Descent, Warcraft, and Magic Carpet. Oh ... and that Internet thing.
Again, your mileage may very, but from my circle -- my clique -- I do not know a single person who owned both an NES and later a SNES that wound up owning a PS1. Every single one jumped to the PC almost solely to play games like Doom on direct dial-up services like DWANGO, and later Quake over true TCP/IP.
This is the generation that I see enjoying the Wii. Over 30, with children, and bored with FPS since we've been playing it since about 1993/94. This is the group that is getting together socially to knock back a few beers and have "Wii parties." I've been doing it. My friends have been doing it. I honestly cannot remember when I've had this much fun playing games -- it's been a loooong time, to say the least.
Nintendo's "ace up its sleeve" going into this gen has been its back-catalog of NES & SNES classics on the Virtual Console. Neither Sony nor Microsoft can possibly compete with that, and that represents a potential "built-in" audience of > 50 million potential buyers, before we even get into the discussion of "blue oceans" or "casual gamers" or "that gimmicky wii remote thingy."
I see this group as the torch bearers that are the ones that are dismissive of the PS3s and 360s "next gen" graphics: People who have been gaming for 20+ years, chasing that brass ring, having finally realized that "next gen" isn't "next gen" anymore once you've bought it -- then its just old tech.
Not only did everyone underestimate "bored gamers," but I think EA and Ubi and Sega and others might wind up proving there have been an awful lot of "bored developers" too, and then things could get really interesting this gen.
