Gamerzines

I lol'd at his tone when he talked about paying for multiplayer and buying clothes for avatars.

And why would a console with an ethernet port not succeed?

Wireless?  Other than that almost everyone on my friends list has at one point bought an avatar item lol. Mostly the Assasin's Creed outfits.

For some reason I think his comments are somewhat slapping the current fanbase, you know the people that currently support his console. 

Oh yeah, I guess he was suffering to the 360 there.  I thought he might've been talking about earlier online consoles like the original Xbox.  Hell, people were begging for an ethernet port on the Dreamcast.

Yeah, it read very much like, "You said paying for online play and digital clothes was a ripoff, then you bought it in droves!" *Iwata laugh*

Microsoft has been sounding more and more like Sony from 2005 these days, like Kuturagi's "They'll buy it even if it has no games!"

The guy basically said:  "Of course you'll buy it!  You always buy it!  And hell, they have achievements!"

Achievement hunters =/= all gamers.

I know everyone is probably going to be caught up in the small picture, and well not see the forest from the trees. So I will just point it out. What should really grab your attention is how knowledgable he is about the concerns expressed by their community. Basically it is a sign that they are paying very close attention. Not that they haven't been opinion miners for years when it comes to games. Remember Microsoft paid trolls to antagonize game forums to get genuine feedback about what gamers wanted in a console. Before they even launched their XBOX.

So yeah its actually a fairly good sign. You might not agree with his sentiment, but at least it isn't based upon ignorance. Which lets face it we get a lot of that when it comes to gaming. The old head up their ass syndrome. You know like the much hated escort mission. I have never met or talked to a player that likes escort missions in games. That would be thousands of fellow players, and you would think if there was a market for this tediousness that I would have heard from it by now. Yet every year we get escort missions. People who have to do escort missions in real life hate escort missions.

Anyway I thought it was worth pointing out. Those comments were fairly well aware of the current public opinion at the moment. Hell even sounds like he has thought about this a lot. Which in my book gets him an A . I realized early in this generation that much of what we hear from manufacturers is pretty nondescript, and just damned vague. You can usually play the words to the picture of say a Frisbee, and you would have no problem thinking that they were talking about that Frisbee. In this case you know what he is talking about, and he is actually talking to you instead of just spouting out verbose gibberish.

Isn't this the second time in the past two weeks that Microsoft has trolled its most loyal customers?  What exactly do they think they're doing...?

I don't think the guy is slapping anyone in the face or trolling.  His statements are light hearted and more of a joke with a point. 

Trolling is a peer to peer activity. You cannot be trolled second hand. Basically it is a act of deception designed to create a desired emotional response to serve the purposes of, or to amuse the troll. Basically he needs to be in the same room with you to fuck with you to see his handiwork so he could get his rocks off.

Not saying his comments were deceptive. Honestly I think he has a valid opinion. Whether you like what that opinion entails. Just saying that Trolls, and Trolling mean something specific. Other then someone saying something you didn't like. You can say he, and they are acting like assholes. That is entirely cool.

Reserve the title for those that are trolling. Otherwise you do two things. First you take the meaning of the word away, and second it makes a trolls day a hell of a lot easier. When you rapid fire out the word troll it is like crying wolf. Eventually people start to ignore it. When someone calls troll it should be a wake up call to the community that they are getting fucked with and disrespected.

Games are games. There is no such thing as a casual or hardcore gamer.

Were we calling Duckhunt, Pong, and Super Mario Bros. 3 casual games when we played them in the 1980s and 1990s? No, they were good games gamers bought.

Is it a matter of time spent playing? Well, if my girlfriend plays Wii Sports for 4 to 5 hours each day, then is she a casual gamer because she actually has a life that prevents her from holing herself up in her room for 8 plus hours?

Is it a matter of content? You would have a point here, but lets consider the converse. If a game such as Wii Sports which has sold more than 25 million on a single console is to be considered a casual game, then how do you argue that those 3 million playing Assassin's Creed 2 are hardcore gamers?

I would argue that Wii Sports is more of a hardcore game because it has more people playing it, whereas the hardcore gamers are your outliers who want to be unique and play games only they play. What is so hardcore about playing a game that has a fraction of the gamerbase than a Wii Sports?

This whole casual vs. hardcore is ridiculous. It is like telling a person who plays Tetris that they are a casual gamer because they are not playing the games you play 24/7 because they prefer games that do not consume their life.

Hardcore gamers are the outliers and any business will kill itself catering to a bunch of fickle, rebellious brats who think they and 2 million other players are unique. I would argue the games with the larger the player base are the hardcore games, while your Assassin's Creed 2 and other game's player base is casual because they are not as numerous and they are extremely selective to the point where they only buy certain games at the expense of having fun with all of them regardless of genre.

A hardcore gamer is someone who plays it all, while the casual gamer is like a teenage high schooler constantly looking to make a fool of himself by shunning what is mainstream and trying to niche himself into obscurity.