Thats not exactly true. Titles like COD and Halo are an exemption and if you look are still purchased by a minority of console owners, but when you add up the numbers (per console) still come up as a large sum. I'd say that moderate gamers are also helping the core pool in sales. When I say moderate, I mean people who don't really play every game, but can still get down the scheme of complex controls and get into the harder titles when they have time. I know plenty of people like this who only have COD, Halo, Gears and Forza in their gaming collection and thats enough for them when they come home from work.

True casuals do not care for 13/16 button control schemes. I call those moderate gamers. These can be core gamers, but don't have the time or don't want it to go any farther with their talents than a couple key games (Mostly that don't have anything to do with kinect). They usually respond to trends from commercials on tv. Casuals create a true boom in the market in their sales (IE: women and men who dont game) and then go stagnant with attach rates as time goes on. Why do you think the DS destroyed the PSP? Because half of their userbase are women. Nintendo keeps their control schemes simple and fun.  Don't get me wrong now, there are women who can game hardcore, but those are still a well respected minority. COD, Halo and Gears all sell well because the Hardcore and moderate gamers (drawn in by heavy commercial dollars) support it. Hardcore and moderates together can generate 5 million for a single game on any single  console being the minority. Make the game a multiplatform and it can easily generate 10 million in copies sold. 

I agree I play goldeneye and black ops but i like jeopardy and sports resort almost as much. 

Core gamers (whatever that means) is smaller than casual gamers (whatever that means)

Casual more important, more players

Please pigeonhole what I am

I don't play console games everday but every  other day I play goldeneye for more or less than 1 hour.*

I play nsmbds everyday for 15 to 30 minutes. 

* doesn't include party games, when friends stop over it's jeopardy, sports resort, Karaoke  and goldeneye multi-player

I really think the concept of core and casual is completely flawed, for one there should be at least three categories the traditional core, the traditional casual and the expanded market.

A lot of people seem to exclude anyone who gamed before this generation from being casual but there's always been casual gamers and the best selling games have always been casual friendly.

Games like COD, GTA and Sports titles are all pretty casual friendly and on the Nintendo side you have titles like Mario and Pokemon. These games are all really open to casual players although they're completely different, but the thing about these games are they also appeal to the hardcore fanbases on the consoles. The people getting to their 10th prestige in COD, collecting every star in Mario, catching every Pokemon, these are all hardcore gamers.

In all honesty very few purely hardcore games are successful, at least massively successful. The majority of the big "hardcore" games are pretty much based around being casual friendly and at the same time allowing for someone to play it "hardcore".

As in that's why I think Mario, COD, Pokemon, Halo, Tetris and GTA are all so successful, they  manage to appeal to more than just one of the two camps that people see the industry as.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that the best strategy is a combination of both but not by trying to appeal to them individually but by making games like I mentioned above. Not that there's anything wrong with pure casual or pure hardcore games, but for a console manufacturer they won't sell that many units. I mean if you can make a game more streamlined and casual friendly without lessening the experience for the hardcore (Driving assists in racing games) or vice versa then it just makes the game better

It has to depend on the business strategy of the console maker. The average casual gamer buys far fewer games than a "core" gamer. Nintendo's business model works targetting casual gamers, because they profit off of the hardware. Even if a number of Wii's sell with only a half dozen units of software over the lifetime, Nintendo makes a hefty profit. On the other end of the spectrum, you have Sony's business model, where even once the PS3's 10 year life-cyle is complete, and it's selling profitably at $150 or less, it's hardware will have sold, overall, at a huge loss. Thus it's primary concern must be core gamers, who buy 10,15, 20 games return that investment. And of course a focus must be chosen - casual gamers wouldn't spend as much on the system as core gamers, whereas core gamers are more likely to be swayed by specs/graphics.

Thus neither is "more important" but rather "more important to ME." So in short, casuals are more important to Nintendo, Core for MS and Sony.

You’ve explained everything well, though when I used the word core I intended it to mean the loyal first adapters for any newly released console, the ones who I would say have a certain brand loyalty for the preexisting game franchises or other such preferences.

When I used the expression casual, I intended it to mean the expanded audience of gamers who might be lapsed gamers or people new to gaming and are more on the fence in deciding which of the big three to go with.

So essentially the point of this thread was to get an idea of which market of gamers is more significant in determining the success of a new console.

Thanks for the feedback everyone, though I should have probably put more then a few minutes of thought into the question and as a result the thread as well-_-  

Actually (concerning things like Farmville and the like), the most casual games are either free or cost a few bucks on appstores, the 95% number someone mentioned must be pertaining to these gamers and they certainly do not bring in more money save for revenue from ads. Casual gamers spend a lot less on gaming in general (and with plug-in's such as adblock the ads are losing ground in the revenue stake as well), probably less than 10% of that of a "hardcore" gamer. If you sell and iPhone game to two million users for 5$ a pop, that's still pocket change compared to a lot of bigger games on consoles (yes, console games cost a lot more to develop but they are also generally more profitable). Dozens of small developers going for the mobile market (Ngage and others for instance) went bankrupt practically overnight and the best deal in all of it is for the owner of the platform or appstore (like Apple charging 30% royalties for almost everything they distribute and sell over their closed store concept).

The casual market is vast though and can certainly bring in a lot of money but they are fickle and can't be relied on as a source of income longterm (like you said) and that remains the biggest challenge in this market.

if we are going to add more sub categories we should just skip to the end and say all gamers are diferent. what makes one core, what makes one casual. when i think casual i think players that dont keep up with the industry and just play random little games and mainstream titles. your moderate player falls under that catagory. when i think core i think dedicated to the gaming scene and medium itself.not sticking to a single console or genre. treats it as a "serious" hobby.how much overlap do we get with each of these? well off hand i can think of a few.  your moderate gamer is a casual becausehe only plays few games of limited genres. they are core because they may dedicate themselves to it as a hobby.

the facebook gamers plays the little internet flash games diligintly and ignores the scene.

the call of duty kids who play the one game religiously and ignore the scene.

the ones that follow the idustry and buy plenty but play with little dedication moving on to the next.

if anything really qualifies as being core its the dedication to your hobby be it gaming as a whole, a specific genre, or even just a single series or game. now in order to do that you dont have to buy a lot of games, you dont even have to play a lot of different games.

in the end really i dont think you can truly seperate the casual and the core directly. if you add the moderate all you do is say that some casuals are core and some cores are casual. that does make sense but may not be what you mean