Whilst reading through the article and the reply's a thought occured to me. Something that has not yet been touched upon in this thread at least.
I'm talking about continued growth. That the multi-tier graph will work the other way around aswell.
A percentage of casual gamers will, at some point undoubtedly continue on to different fare, thus actually ensuring a growth in the hardcore market aswell. (Current core gamers + percentage of casuals that tries the "harder" stuff.)
I'll even go so far as to say that after a period of core gaming as a niche-market, it'll eventually grow out to be the mainmarket again (this stage will take decennia at the least.) Think about it... the largest possible casual market we could get is the entire earth population. This would be 100% - and as the population grows, so will casual gaming. A certain percentage of the casual market will try their hands on core gaming. This could start out to be 10% of the 100, then eventually grow out to be what? 40 or something - 100 eventually??
Most of us here started casual no doubt. I started on Mario brothers (a game that would be considered casual by now) and divide my time now between No More Heroes, CoD4 and Medieval2 Total war. And SSBB soon. I bet that this will certainly happen within the casual market, an explosive growth in core at some time or another
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