Quick informal poll.  We've heard a lot about Natal and Arc and targeting Wii's expanded audience from the industry media, pundits and analysts, but I think Nintendo's clear overtures to the self-described "hardcore" is going generally un-or-under reported.  Almost their entire Wii lineup really seems aimed at the established gamer community, from big name sequels (Super Mario Galaxy 2, Metroid: Other M) to niche favorites (Sin & Punishment 2, Zangeki no Reginliev) to market specific RPGs (The Last Story, Xenoblade).  Even their western co-promotion of Monster Hunter, arguably one of the more hardcore of console games, and release of the Classic Controller Pro alongside it.  In fact, their only real concession to the casuals for this year against Natal and Arc seems to be in the Vitality Sensor, which comes off as a bit unambitous and almost confused.  It's almost the inverse of 2009, which featured Wii Sports, Wii Fit Plus and NSMB Wii as huge selling casual and bridge games.

So how does everyone think it'll play out?  Will Nintendo start to draw part of that tiny vocal minority back, or will the competition just eat away at their big new market?

i think natal might win over alot of casual gamers just because its so different from the ps3 and wii motion controls.

I voted the third option, but I don't really see any of the three happening significantly in 2010 (Should have a 'none' option). I do see that happening over the longer term though.

I would of course have to go with Nintendo on this one.

If you noticed, Nintendo did a big service for the hardcore in 2007 after a pretty huge drought in 2006 (with the exception of LoZ: TP). We were flooded with awesome games like Super Paper Mario, Mario Party 8, Super Mario Galaxy, and Metroid Prime 3. Plus they were almost done with Mario Kart Wii and Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

We have pretty much experienced a drought for most of 2008 and pretty much all of 2009, but now Nintendo is back with a vengence releasing awesome games that they were probably working on when everybody was complaining that we didn't get shit.

Its like a cycle.

Yeah, I think that's reasonable too, I should've had a 4th "none" option.  I can definitely see Nintendo's core oriented overtures (S&P2, Xenoblade, MH3, etc) going largely ignored by the industry media/hardcore.

I think the most likely one to make a noticeable change is Natal just because of the hype it's getting. Otherwise they'll all have extremely small changes, a small amount of PS360 hardcore gamers will finally get a Wii and a small amount of Wii gamers will get into one of the two HD motion controls, nothing real meaningful.

NATAL will.

I don't think Nintendo's efforts are going far beyond the core audience they already had on GameCube, and the wand will sell alright but it's not going to do anything special.

I'd say Xenoblade and The Last Story are well beyond anything they tried on GC.  Mario and Metroid are obviously for the Nintendo faithful first and foremost, but the RPGs, Monster Hunter... this stuff is clearly aimed gamers who traditionally didn't go for Nintendo last gen.

i'd say all three of those choices are full of fail by MS will be the least fail.

Nintendo will continue to move upstream and push Sony and MS more and more towards being niche players.