posers? Do you mean posters? Why are you going on about posters. And no the sales do not prove your point that Nintendo has a core home console userbase, actually the opposite, that most if not a huge chunk of the Wii's userbase is casual and buys dance/fitness games. Just look at what charts for the Wii these last 2 years.

Don't know if "your goodself" is sarcasm or not but, the NGC probably did have a little more. I have noticed that some "hardcore" fans did switch to the HD Buddys when Nintendo started to go "casual." But it actually wasn't Nintendo, yeah they kind of started casual games but they kept up with their original titles too. Other 3rd parties are the ones who mostly turned it into a casual system, but I, for the most part, agree with you. 

Not enough crappy fps games for the true 14 year old hardcore gamers.

Well it seems like a lot of people are buying the 360/PS3 because it's the "cool thing" now... so partially I think that's what he means, but not saying people don't buy it cause they actually like it or anything but it just seems thats what is mostly going on.

I didn't really mean that it hasn't been like that with Nintendo before but, it's very apparent in my school how everyone thinks that CoD and 360/PS3 are the best consoles in the world and Nintendo is for little kids/noobs. But if you bring up a convo. about Nintendo everyone seems to know Nintendo and they even admit they have at least one Nintendo system and at least like one Nintendo game. It's there secret Nintendo identity I guess you can call it XD

...and to think either sony or ms are rumored to not be joining next gen meaning some of us are playing on an soon to be extinct product line. ...it's probably me.

You do realize 10Million people bought Super Smash bros Brawl, do you not? Grammar nazis don't interest me... You and Koweniki fit that category very well. I don't lack education, you both lack manners. :P

I'm not a grammar nazi I just didn't know what you meant.

And only a mere 3m more than Melee on Gamecube? It's not as if SSMB doesn't look friendly to casuals either.

Shall you challenge my education? Je pense que mon Français détruit le tien mon cher ami. "Poseur" is a borrowed word from a language I can speak sonic waves ahead of you ;) I didn't bother to be so proper... but shall the grammar nazi forgive? 

"  So you are some kind of flash bastard if you buy a PS3 or 360 but a real gamer if you buy a Wii?"

No, you are a kind of flash bastard if you refuse to buy anything Nintendo simply because their marketing sucks and is geared to nannys. Gamers look at content not marketing. Having said that, we as "analysts in training" look at marketing, only to show us that posers buy games that are the next coolest thing rather than judging games on what they actually are. ;)

And what of answering my question that was actually related to OP and not related to some flamebait post, wouldn't that be grand?

Now, I won't say you're using mere opinions, because I don't stoop to that level. I understand what you're saying, that casuals may like SSBB, but it is a known thing in the community that Brawl is a game more geared to the core gamer, especially the one that likes Nintendo games. It's an excellent fighter, very fun, high quality and highly competitive. By the same measure it can be said that Starcraft is more of a game for gamers than for casuals. More evidence is seen in the fan-made smashboards forum/community for super smash Melee/Brawl gaming, discussion and tourneys.

With that said, we can see that with only 3m more than Melee, the proof is that total HW sales in a gen don't prove total number of real gamers on a platform, since the Cube and Wii core base seem to be very similar, if numbers are any indicator (8M to 10M).