Yes, the Wii is competing with the 360 and PS3, and it's easy to prove it

[bdbdbd]

Squilliam said:

bdbdbd said:
Not bad. I would more likely put it in the same way with Sean Malstrom, to upmarket and downmarket. If we start with upmarket, right from the top of it, this market is for demanding gamers, who require highest-level visuals for their games, and this is where Wii doesn't compete with PS360, but it's where they jump to PC territory. Moving one step down, would be the core market, into which the vast majority of the current gamers are and this market is where the competition is most fierce. Then the downmarket, where Wii is almost the only factor (competition having only few games which appeal this demographic, Scene It, GTA4, Singstar, DDR) it's where the PS2 and PC compete the Wii. And below the downmarket, is the Blue Ocean market, where only DS is the competition for Wii. And there's also one more "side" market, which caters every market propably besides the "Blue Ocean" market (although most of these people are in the core market), it's the "casual" group who wants their games to be more cinematic, interactive movies, instead of games. And that's the market where the market last time expanded.

I think we are on similar pages, but not quite the same. I perfer to think of games like guitar hero, SMG, Wii sports as more lifestyle games. Anybody can integrate these types of games into their life, which is why they sell so well on the Wii and on consoles in general. Besides I think the distinction between casual and hardcore is how gaming is integrated into their life not by the types of games they play. Someone for example who plays games instead of watches tv is more hardcore than someone who would watch tv before playing game. Distinctions based on the type of games played don't tell the full picture and tend to mislead.

I also don't like the distinction between the level of graphics and the difficulty of the game and control scheme to define whether or not a game is hardcore. I believe its how you play the game and why you play it. If you play Mario Kart just to bide time and not care if you win or lose - thats casual, if you play it online competitively thats hardcore. You can play GTAIV by messing around and blowing shit up - thats casual, or you can play it in a hardcore way. That partly explains why it is so successful. It appeals to a lot of different people in a different way. Games with a good mix of both can do very well for everybody.

 Im not contradicting you, but im explaining some of your points with my own perspective.

 

 

Actually i do agree with you. I should have been more specific about how the upmarket and downmarket relates to your post i quoted.

Everyone is in the upmarket by their own personal standards, but the upmarket consumer in question, demands the type of games that have long developement times, in this case mostly high-end graphics and "deep" gameplay, but in exchange, are willing to invest a lot of money for gaming. This group also is experienced in gaming, but not necessarily buy a lot of games.
Going down the line, the amount of money people are willing to spend on gaming decreases, as well as technical requirements considering the games they play.
Then the most interesting group, the blue ocean gamers, can be divided to two groups; people who are new to gaming and people who play flash-games, solitaire, sudokus etc. on their PC for free.
The blue ocean groups don't use money on games at all, but that's largely because the market doesn't cater for them. The blue ocean gamers that get sucked in, eventually end up to the upmarket, downmarket or in between or just become lapsed gamers.
Gamers in different categories can also move to another category, up or down or change along the market and remain stagnant.

And for the "hardcore" and "casual", they definately are just a way of playing games, as you may have noticed, in my earlier post i type "casual" once to demonstrate the "sidemarket" with term widely in use and i didn't classify upmarket as "hardcore".