While I don't think every gamer has to like Nintendo games, Mario is rated on fun because that's what it's what games are fundamentally about.

With so much of the industry (in my opinion) degrading as a result of prioritising story and spectacle over gameplay, (RE6 for instance) Mario is a shining example that games can be great without all that stuff.

No game should ever be penalised for dumping story and such in order to focus on gameplay. Gameplay is 90% of a game's value, everything else put together is only the other 10%.

Well, but the story is there to keep you interested. There are some games that can live without a story. Puzzler like Tetris etc... Just Games that are there to challange your skill.

But there are more classes of gamer. Not everyone is playing just to test his skills or to win in a competitive situation. There are some really entertaining games that over great characters or a complex story that make you care about the world and the characters. There are games that can make me laugh, games that can almost make me cry, games that make me think about the deeper consequences of religion, war, atomic bombs or propaganda and etnic cleansing.

Games can be seen as a simple "electronic toy", that keep you busy for short periods. But games can also have the educational and entertainment value of a good theatre play. And if you played some really good games like Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy XIII or Heavy Rain playing a game without such experience can feel quite empty and you miss something.

I grew up with Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World, but after Playing Ratchet & Clank, Jak & Dexter or Sly Racoon, I miss Character interaction between Mario and Luigi.

I've played Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy XIII and Heavy Rain, and honestly I didn't find them much good. FFXIII and Heavy Rain in particular fell flat beause their gameplay was lacking in favour of graphics/story.

If you demand story, then yeah, Mario's not for you. But to me, the lack of story in Mario is like the lack of machine guns in Citizen Kane; kind of beside the point.

This applies when the game's gameplay isn't enough to keep you continue playing.

When gameplay alone is enough to keep you playing. Good story or anything else is just icing on the cake.

There are actually mario games with quite funny stories an awesome character interaction (even if mario and luigi don't speak) like the Mario & Luigi series (superstar saga, Partners in Time, Bowser's Inside Story). Those games were easily the most fun Mario games storywise, and also the most fun i had with mario games these past few years.

Well, Final Fantasy X was not there to keep you fighting against the same enemies over and over. Final Fantasy X tried to make you question the consequences of blind faith, stereotypes against different Cultures or if a person should sacrifice his own life to save other lifes.

Gameplay is important, because a broken game is almost unplayable. But even if the gameplay is ok, that does not mean that a game can keep me interested. With that arguments you can say that a game like WoW has so much content that you can play for thousands of hours... but if there is no interesting content than there is one saturation point where gameplay alone is just not enough.

Mario normally has a good level design and the games are short enough that you don't get bored. But there are games that can offer similar quality gameplay AND a funny story/dialogues. It similar to Rayman Origins. I really liked the game, but the story was beyond awful and everytime I finshed a level a just wanted to switch the TV channel for a minute because the dancing sequence at the end of the level was annoying. But when I replayed the R&C Collection, I enjoyed the Video Sequences at the beginning and the end of the level. There where some really good jokes.

I have a hard time believing the PS4 and XBox 8 will feauture such powerful (and powerhungry) graphics cards. The diagram shows the XBox will use around 120 Watts total with the SOC around 50 Watts. That leaves less then 70 Watts for the GPU. A 7770 already uses 80 Watts of power.
And then there's the cost. Every rumor suggests the new XBox will be packaged with Kinect 2.0. I don't know what price Kinect 2.0 will be but I doubt it will be 50 dollars or less so unless Microsoft will release the XBox at a price range of 499 dollars (highly doubtful in the current market) or higher I doubt the new XBox will feature powerful and costly hardware like the 360 did at the time.

As for the link to the supposed PS4 specs, I don't believe them for a second. DirectX 11.5? The Tahiti supports 11.1, next up is DX12. A Graphics card of at least 399,- in retail? That's about the same price as the 7800 GT in which the RSX was based. If that rumor is true the PS4 will be the PS3 all over again. They could sell it for 499,- and still make a massive loss. Sony can't afford that.
And then there's the fact Sony has already said they wouldn't be gunning for the most powerful console next gen as that has only cost them money.

So I doubt the XBox and PS4 will use anything close to the tahiti cards. Even if they're underclocked a card based on those chips will require at least over a 100 Watts of power. That doesn't fit the diagrams 120 Watt of system power at all. An underclocked 7770 though (or an overclocked 7670 or equivalent) does fit the diagram. Those will still be more powerful than the rumored Wii U GPU though but nothing like 8 or 10 times more powerful.

"But to me, the lack of story in Mario is like the lack of machine guns in Citizen Kane; kind of beside the point."
haha, i couldnt have said it better Curl

the thing keeping me from buying a Wii U at the moment is that there's no must-get game(s) for me, most of it's line up are just late ports of games I already have; yes they might have added content or added in DLC, it's just not enough to warrant a purchase of a whole 'nother system and a re-purchasing of the game itself. Nintendo 1st-party is top notch but nothing that grabs my attention as well .but seeing their titles in HD is a nice add.

What will get me wanting a Wii U is if a splurge of RPG's hit the console, that;s how MS got me to buy a 360

I agree, Tahiti based card do seem bit of a stretch, especially considering it's tied to some of PS4 rumours, and knowing Sony's financial situation.....

On the other hand, 7850 equivalent card (or performance) does not sound that crazy - it's nowhere near high end card even at this moment (can be found for 180$ or even less), let alone one year from now, it's in the line of that 8x Xbox360 power performance target (not 8x WiiU, it's 10x e6760 in OpenCL fluid simulation and RayTracing), and if you look at 7970m (not saying they're actually using this one), which is downclocked mobile version of 7870, it's rated at 75W TDP - how they manage to do that compared to desktop version is beyond my knowledge to be honest. Add 95W Bulldozer 8-core CPU (not saying they're actually using this one)....still sounds reasonable I'd say (though not 120W as in that diagram) - original 360s were peaking around 185-190W in games, IIRC, PS3 even more.