Haha, yeah, "oh my god, a pro post, gotta blame as fanboy blabla and tell that the other consoles are AT LEAST as cool"

You are just using "core" and "casual" like every cool web-zine. Why is "hardcore" not about playtime? Oh "please".

What is core? Spending 70 million $ for development? Guns? Having started playing on SNES? Or maybe PS2, the pure core machine (not)? What is hardcore when spending TONS of time playing videogames is not? "Please". As if playing CoD or any other "AAA" title - that is funnily as successful as "casual" games and played by a lot of "casuals" - five hours a day is any more core.

The answer is simple... because major 3rd party games don't sell nearly as well on Nintendo systems, mainly because the Nintendo audience primarily cares about Nintendo games above everything else, and the fact that their current audience is made up of many expanded / casual gamers that don't care for graphics intensive, mature, and/or competitive online multiplayer games like the GTA's, COD's, Mass Effects and Assassin's Creeds of the world in the first place.

Take this example from last gen:  RE4, probably the biggest 3rd party exclusive on the GC and one of the best looking games from last gen period, barely sold a million copies in the west and less than 2m worldwide lifetime.  It was later ported to the PS2 with an inferior looking version but with extra gameplay features and options... and it outsold the GC version by more than 2-1 according to the data here on VGC.

Hell, the enhanced Wii Edition sold better than the GC version, and was one of only a few AAA hardcore games released during the Wii's lifespan.  So what are 3rd parties supposed to do when they know that releasing mature games on a Nintendo system, especially today, runs a huge risk and might not be worth it to them?  Take-Two for example knows that most of the people who are going to get a game like GTA are going to do so on consoles like PS360, or the PC.  Nobody interested in this game is going to buy a Wii U for the purpopse of playing GTA.

I got news for you... those evil old western games are the ones selling a shit ton of copies and growing the industry further while the Japanese 3rd parties are becoming more and more irrelevant as they continue to release games that cater to a niche audience when viewing the curring gaming industry's demographics as a whole.

Unfortunately, you won't get Tales of Vesperia on something that's not an xbox if you're outside of Japan, Microsoft paid to have it blocked in the West. I'm as sad as you are. 

OT, he is conveniently ignoring his competitor's upcoming consoles. Wish a journalist would have the balls to put the question to him.

Core gamer refers to individual spending habits as much as playing habits.

A key behavior that makes the core gamer important to developers and publishers is that they are constantly buying new games in greater volumes than any other demographic.

Presumably they're also playing a lot as well otherwise they wouldn't be spending so much on games, but what matters most is that they are playing a broad range of titles rather than the same few games.

Sure, one could be the most hardcore Wii Fit player on the planet, logging 3 hours a day every day for years on end, but if that's ALL they play and have bought nothing else during those years, does anyone really think for an instant that any publisher considers that type of hardcore player to be in any way shape or form relevant to their business?

They didnt release AAA games because there was not a core userbase...
There wasnt a core userbase cause they didnt release AAA games...
They didnt release AAA games because there was not a core userbase...
There wasnt a core userbase cause they didnt release AAA games...

do you realize how stupid this is?

is devs fault for their bias and mistrust...

“With the Wii U’s graphics capability, processing power, and HD-output, we’ll get those games. That’s a huge competitive advantage versus where we were with the Wii.”

I hope he sticks to those words when the PS4 and the next xbox come out next year...

Yes, but if it's actually a game worth buying, Wii U owners might buy it. RE4 is a bad example, partly because they indeed chose to make it exclusive, and released it when the damage due to lack of third party games on GameCube was already done. As a multiplat, that's still a million more copies than they would have sold if they had made it PS2 exclusive, and that's the core argument here. People say "why do they still bother with Call of Duty on Wii? It's only a million copies versus ten million a piece on PS360," because that's a million copies that they wouldn't have sold otherwise. Once you make that first bridge to a platform, that's most of your future porting costs. If GTAV sold 1.5 million on Wii U, only, then it would still be more than worth it as both a present investment ($$) and as a future one.

Third party games not selling nearly as well on Nintendo consoles is because 3rd parties usually (and RE4 is no exception here, because of how quickly they announced that the PS2 version would have more features) make the Nintendo-console version the bitch version. Madden NFL All Play, insanely feature-stripped Call of Duties, a version of Rock Band without the ability to download songs or do anything but quickplay. The games come late and without options, and so they are scorned, rightfully, because they are the inferior versions, and so people who really want the game buy it elsewhere and people who are only mildly interested just skip it altogether. If you put real effort in (and the game isn't insanely niche to start with, or remove aspects of the game that made the series famous in the first place, a la GTA: Chinatown Wars), then you get results, this is a constant across all platforms and Nintendo platforms are no exception

Again: the blame falls on 3rd party shoulders, so where's the good answer for "why?"

The elitist casuals left Nintendo before Wii