it has nintendogs and cats. its going to sell 30 million copies.

'hardcore' and 'casual' are definitions of how one plays a game, rather than a definition of the game itself.  One can also be 'hardcore' at one game and 'casual' at another.  An example of this is my Mum with Tetris on GB, from 2000 to 2009 (when I bought her Tetris DS), she play roughly 45 minutes of the game a day almost without fail, while I've probably only played about 30 hours in that time.  She is the 'hardcore' Tetris player, while the same cannot be said for myself.  On almost everything else (bar AS: Pictopict, Brain Training and Nintendogs), I am leaps and bounds more 'hardcore' than my mother, but not for Tetris.  Equally, someone could hypothetically (and I'm sure they exist) be a 'hardcore' Wii Fit player as they use the game daily and have as a result lost significant amounts of weight.

I'm not saying some games don't lend themselves better to either 'hardcore' or 'casual' styles,  but to see the gaming industry in that Black and White spectrum is just flawed as hell.

While it is a somewhat good start, this game won't expand the market (unless you're so much of a cat lover and was waiting for the first video-game with cats to appear, haha), because this market has already been unveiled. To further expand the market Nintendo has to make games for people who never played.

So it is either black or whit? Did not vote as there is no gray and that is what Nintendo wants.

they cant expand the market anymore! the only people who arent using the 3ds are old people and women in their 30s and 40s who arent gamers. what are they supposed to do make ds sports?

Nintendo expanded the market so much I'm not sure you could create many more new genres and do many new things to attract non-gamers. Nintendo already targets children , teens , adults , seniors  both men and women how much more can they do to attract new non-gamers?

I think Nintendo can rely on their current targetted audience to spread the word. Nintendogs Cats may lead to more people buying it this time round as those who bought the DS and its version will now encourage their friends to buy 3DS and the new version.

I think 3D may expand the target audience as well offering something never done before. Many non-Gamers may be attracted to the system especially if Nintendo gets Avatar and Tangled and Guardians and other 3D movies on the 3DS.

It's probably the most "in the middle" console I've ever seen - I'd vote that if it was an option

Right now the line-up is hardcore, in the sense a varied amount of genres that interest everyone. That's hardcore to me. Having only one genre is being casual, especially if its a genre like cooking or baking or sports. It doesn't usually interest the people who would play games normally.

Agreed. They are empty, meaningless terms created by the games industry and media in attempt to separate and segragate gamers into different demographics, and used primarily by the so called "hardcore" gamers to make themselves sound cool, as well as feel superior.

There is no such thing as "casual" gameplay. Anytime you try to ask a hardcore gamer what that even means (what aspects of a game make it hardcore/casual), most have no answer, or they all will give you completely different answers. This to me exposes these terms as bs.

Nintendos goal is to be the casual gamer's handheld of choice.

Of course their userbase can and will include hardcore gamers, but if it's only attracting hardcore gamers then they're doing something wrong.

Although, if Nintendo was able to make the consumer think that the handheld reflected the consumers desires, i.e. a hardcore gamer thinks its hardcore, and a casual think its casual, then that is when Nintendo truly wins.