No. It's I for ignore the ignorant.

Thanks to Words of Wisdom.

Sure, but Nintendo has more sales because it sells to non-mainstream gamers, like children, like females, like old people. These people are its competitive advantage.

That's as simple as it is.

I disagree, Wii didn't sell because of it's hardware but because of the software who used motion controls. The most important games this generation were definitely exclusive.

I finally found a thread worth posting in. 

Everything you're saying is 100% true.  As long as Nintendo stays Nintendo they will stay on top and the counter culture as you so accurately put it is split down the middle, things will stay with them in front for a while. 

This is why Microsoft and Sony's shift towards the casual gamer is questionable to me.  I mean Sony fans are Sony fans and Microsoft fans, so why would they want something similar to Nintendo?  I mean, I don't see them taking the casual market away from Nintendo.  Also, I think that it will turn a lot of MS and Sony's customers off.

Indeed you're right. But imagine these games wouldn't have motion controls... then the casual appeal would be gone.

That was what I meant. Past console generations didn't have as much casual gamers as this gen. The Wii actually brought gaming to non-gamers.

If you guys think about it, the Wii first party games atm is pretty much like the golden age of NES and SNES days atm O_O;;;; If they can get 3rd party support on their next console then O_O;;;;;;

I'm not sure about the theory that during the N64 and GC eras Nintendo was less Nintendo-like or that they were desperately trying to go after the "hardcore", "mature" demographic with those consoles. I don't think Zelda: Wind Waker would have looked like it did if that were the case. Or that a game called Super Mario Sunshine would have been released. Or that the GameCube would've been purple. I think those consoles were just as Nintendo-like as any.

If such a thing exists, surely the Wii is less Nintendo-like as its success is built on Wii Sports and Wii Fit, ie. realistic, simulator, "lifestyle" type games, instead of Nintendo's traditional character based, fantasy based, story based, action/adventure based games.

Nintendo has their dominance because they have a couple of key strategies to appeal to a mass market audience that Sony and MS simply are incapable of doing, being large corporations that have not been solely game companies. Their first big strategy is taking gaming back to its roots of raw arcade style gameplay. If you look in an acrade, even nowadays when the popularity of arcades has dwindled, you see people of all ages, both male and female. Wii in large part appeals to THIS crowd. Arcade type of games appeal to many because they are so accessible and fun. They are simple to jump into, yet complex to master. These are the games Nintendo, like Sega, does best. That is why I was happy with this years E3, because Nintendo seems to be embracing this stlye more than ever, with Metroid Other M, Kirby, and Donkey Kong Country. Sony and MS simply don't make these types of games. Rather, they mostly make games that are more similar to movies, with long cut scenes, heavy dialoge, and epic storylines, that most people just don't care about in their games. They want to be in control, they want fun, and they want it NOW.

The second major strategy for Nintendo has been to experiment with new ideas in order to grab new audiences who have never played games before. As we know, the biggest success story with this is Wii Fit, while Wii Music failed. Wii Fit gave people who normally wouldn't give games a second look a reason to be interested, because the game served a new purpose besides simply entertainment; it helped you lose weight. This helped to bring in a new audience consisting mainly of women in their 30s-50s, who before had been ignored for gaming. Wii Sports I view as a combo between both strategies, as it consisted of raw arcade style gameplay, but made it a social experience as well, that got new gamers interested.The key for this strategy is branching out to new audiences by making games that give them a reason to look, when nothing else has.

With the N64 and Gamecube, Nintendo did not use either of these strategies. They confined themselves to the more complex cinema style games in an effort to show off their console's power. The games were mostly in 3D, highly complex for most people, and did not make an effort to draw in NEW gamers. They were often very "linear" games, which I believe most people do not like. Unfortunately for them, this was playing by Sony and MS terms, and when you play by the terms of giant corporations like Sony and MS, you are probably going to lose. It was a Nitendo console, but at heart was more similar to a Sony and MS console. Wii has again allowed Nintendo to grow, because Nintendo fell back to their arcade roots and bringing back many of the oldschool NES and arcade gamers who were forgotten about, and in the process have reached out to new audiences that other companies did not bother trying to appeal to at all. They are back to playing on their own terms, rather than Sony and MS's terms. Now instead of Nintendo trying to be like Sony and MS, the reverse has occured, and you have Sony and MS trying to be like Nintendo.

As long as Nintendo continues to embrace their arcade roots, they will dominate, because these are the types games that appeal to the most people. Of course, they also need to try more experiments like Wii Fit, and attempt to expand gaming to new audiences.

I don't know about Microsoft's policies, but I know that Sony don't force their teams to do anything they don't want to do, and that shouldn't change for a peripheral. Sony provides the money and the developers get to knock themselves out with whatever they want to do. So Sony 1st party developers adopting the Move and 3D is purely of their own choice.

And how are Microsoft not putting their top developers on Kinect? Microsoft only owns Lionhead and Rare, and they are pretty busy with Kinect games (with only Fable 3 being the big game from them that doesn't require Kinect).

And anyway, at this point in the generation, Move and Kinect could never be anything but peripherals. If anything, Sony and Microsoft might be softening the blow so to speak, if they're planning to release their next generation of consoles with control schemes derived from Move and Kinect.

I think the reason so much of their core audiences are hostile towards motion gaming is because they percieve it to be about mini games and waggle. Sony are actually doing something about this, with games like Heavy Rain, SOCOM 4, Killzone 3, RE5:Gold and others; games for their core audience, enhanced with motion controls (though I suppose time will tell if it's really an enhancement). Sony's hardware might seem close to that of the Wii, but they're trying to distance themselves from the Wii through the software, unlike Microsoft, who have very different hardware but the software seems more like your stereotypical Wii game.

Regardless of the outcome this generation, I expect motion controls are here to stay, for all three companies, and I expect the next generation of consoles to launch with some sort of motion control schemes. Sony and Microsoft will certainly be mindful of their core audience and their "needs" though, so I wouldn't be surprised to see something like the fabled break-apart controller from Sony and Microsoft launching with both Kinect and a traditional control pad out of the box.

But I don't think they abandoned 2D Mario. They just started making 3D Mario games because that was the big new thing at the time (that they were a huge part of). I don't think they see 2D and 3D Mario platformers as two separate franchises. They're all Mario platformers. Plus there were still 2D Mario games being released at the time on the handhelds (albeit remakes).