Your logic doesn't follow.  A hardcore gamer can easily hate another genre which has its own hardcore players.  For example, MMOs like WoW have tons of hardcore gamers, though MMOs are often hated by hardcore gamers who play FPS titles.

It's the Pokemon effect:

It's so true though. Pokemon was huge while I was in elementary school. One of the coolest kids in the school invited me over just so he could have someone to play Pokemon Stadium with.

Then high school was a dark time, where you had to play in secret because it was a "kid's game".

And then college rolls around... and everyone (everyone!) has a DS with Pokemon. My room-mate and I would spend (waste) hours upon hours training, breeding, and testing our teams. It was a magical time.

Yeah... no. I don't think you will find people agreeing with your list.

But anyway, the terminology of hardcore and casual is of course stupid. The only reason why people started to divide things in two camps is because first the DS was beating the PSP and then the Wii was beating the HD consoles. People could either accept that Nintendo was winning or they could go the route of breaking it down into different markets (with hilariously arbitary definitions), so Nintendo sales were acknowledged, but they were not really beating Sony and Microsoft. Others went the route of not being willing to categorize the Wii as seventh generation console, but that has died down ever since the Wii started to get outsold by the HD consoles on a regular basis.

I am confident in saying that had Nintendo lost the crown in the handheld market with the DS and had the Wii gone the way of the GameCube, then the market would have never been broken down into hardcore and casual games. After all, nobody ever seemed to be offended by the sales of Singstar and Guitar Hero on the PS2, as well as the countless licensed kids games like Spongebob Squarepants.

What's wrong with your list is that it violates the basic definition of a hardcore game (a game that a person likes). Since many people around here like at least one series of the group GTA, CoD and Halo, they will not tolerate that you are trying to shove these games into the casual camp (games that people don't like).

Your last paragraph contains a rhetorical question, I would assume. I just explained why games began to get separated into "hardcore" and "casual". But to add to it, this categorisation is driven by elitism. Those who consider themselves hardcore usually also consider themselves superior.

Yeah... no. I don't think you will find people agreeing with your list.

But anyway, the terminology of hardcore and casual is of course stupid. The only reason why people started to divide things in two camps is because first the DS was beating the PSP and then the Wii was beating the HD consoles. People could either accept that Nintendo was winning or they could go the route of breaking it down into different markets (with hilariously arbitary definitions), so Nintendo sales were acknowledged, but they were not really beating Sony and Microsoft. Others went the route of not being willing to categorize the Wii as seventh generation console, but that has died down ever since the Wii started to get outsold by the HD consoles on a regular basis.

I am confident in saying that had Nintendo lost the crown in the handheld market with the DS and had the Wii gone the way of the GameCube, then the market would have never been broken down into hardcore and casual games. After all, nobody ever seemed to be offended by the sales of Singstar and Guitar Hero on the PS2, as well as the countless licensed kids games like Spongebob Squarepants.

I'll quote myself:

Hating a game just because it is different is quite stupid. Imagine that every company made only shooters (or the genre you prefer). Then if the shooter userbase isn't big enough the entire industry would collapse. Diversity is absolutely needed. Do you think we have enough people that doesn't realize this?

Should I trust a forum user instead of the Wikipedia then? Notice that by your definition Civilization, Gran Turismo and Minecraft (for example) are for soccer moms.