Do Nintendo fans enjoy seeing the downfall of the HD consoles?

[NightDragon83]

Shameless said:

Let's get one thing straight before I begin - everyone on this forum should be a hardcore gamer. There are no two ways about it.

Because of this, it often suprises me that Nintendo fans enjoy seeing the PS360 consoles fall; consoles which are entirely tailored and aimed at the hardcore gaming audience. The success of the Wii will mean that all console developers will spend a lot more time and money on the casual gaming audience and where does that leave us?

From what I can see of this generation, gaming will cease to be a hardcore form of entertainment. We'll still have hardcore games in the future but they're likely to be lower budget and less innovative.

As far as I can see, our preferred form of entertainment will go down the shitter as it becomes less and less profitable to make hardcore games. The success of the HD consoles is extremely likely to be the deciding factor on what the state of gaming will be in the next gen.

Well first let me say I'm a life-long Ninty fanboy so I'll defend them to the death about anything, but even so I still don't think the Wii will kill either "HD" or "hardcore" gaming.

First of all there will always be a "hardcore" group of gamers, I mean hell at least 90% of developers out there would probably consider themselves "hardcore" gamers so that division of gaming is not going to go anywhere. And over time I think that the overall percentage of game players who consider themselves "hardcore" will increase as more and more people get into gaming and play games regularly as their #1 source of entertainment. Yes, the Wii appeals mainly to the "casual" audience out there today, but i can clearly remember back to the days when the NES was synonymous with videogames out there, and it was very popular among the non-traditional gaming crowd even back then... when my uncle got an NES for X-mas back in the day, everyone in the family including my grandmother played Super Mario Bros and Donkey Kong till the cows game home.

Everyone was into Nintendo back in the day, and to this day I'm sure that you all have at least a few relatives who will look at you like you have 8 eyes if you start talking about 360 or PS3, but if you bust out an NES they'll go apeshit and start playing that thing as if they never put the controller down after all these years. So now all the Wii is doing is starting the cycle anew, bringing in more people to gaming, and it's successor will most likely be more of a powerhouse console now that Ninty has a bajillion dollars saved up from Wii and DS sales, so surely they can put some money into making a more powerful system. Same thing that happened with the NES... they sold tons of consoles and games, and when it came time for its successor, the SNES, Nintendo was able to make (what was at the time) one of the most powerful pieces of gaming hardware and a showcase for the future of gaming. I'd also say that the SNES was also geared more towards the "hardcore" gamer with it's epic line-up of RPG games and tough as nails action and platforming titles, and I expect Wii's successor to follow in that path.

As for "HD" gaming and the current state of the 360 and PS3, I don't see a problem their either... another reason for the Wii's current mass appeal is that you don't need a state of the art HDTV to fully enjoy it, and since there arent yet HDTVs in the majority of households Nintendo was probably smart to go this route for now making the Wii more affordable. Of course by the next console cycle analog broadcasts would have ceased making digital and HDTVs standard fare, and Blu-Ray and other high-def media will be much more affordable and consumer-friendly by then. This is only the first generation of HD consoles so the market is only going to grow as the HDTV market grows. But at the end of the day if the HD consoles do fail, then i guess we can put all the blame where it's really deserved... on Wii Fit!