misterd on 12 July 2007
| mancandy said: I don't think there is much of a similarity. Was there such a thing as a "gamer" back in the days of the Atari2600 or even the NES? The videogame market at the time was just at its infancy and I think for the most part, Atari and Nintendo were marketing to kids while catching the eyes of the curious. Videogames in general were coonsidered a novelty at that time. Now, videogame purchases can be segmented into the type of "gamer" and videogame makers can now market to a particular segent of the "gamer" population. The beauty of the Wii is that it is attracting new gamers, some may choose to continue gaming and some may not. That happens with all consoles, people will be curious and buy a system and then go from there. Not all the of the PS2 owners are hardcore gamers. Not all of them own MGS3, GTA3 or GT3. I don't understand where this fear of companies stopping development of core gaming genres. The core gamers will always be there and companies will have to cater to them. Not everyone is going to buy Brain Training. However, companies cannot afford to let this opportunity to capture new customers pass them by. They can't ignore the masses. Just better graphics isn't going to cut it any more. Maybe the novelty of awesome graphics has worn off? |
Yes. The gamers in the 2600 days were called "kids" (or, more precisely, boys). There were relatively few whoo didn't play games. For adults, the opposite was true. So the divide was age based.
As the kids got (and continue to get) older, some game up gaming due to work, family and other unimpotant things. Some kept their priorities straight, reslulting in the divide of gamer and non-gamer.
