This thread got me thinking on this subject...

If we see companies and major consoles trying to make moves to try to go way broad in terms of more demographics/different types of gamers and see a more casual shift... is this in a way putting us in the near/far future to opening up a can of worms? It's just a thought, but the idea is that opening up to a bigger base == more $ for companies. If they open to appeal to everyone, then that obviously means a lot of stuff we love to play best could very well become watered down for the general culture... so...

It's like the difference between purer forms of music and pop. Obviously, POP caters to everyone and is meant to have a larger base... I would not like that to happen since obviously to me gaming has always been somewhat a niche hobby that we can enjoy. I think the gaming industry to some degree has already seen some of the mainstream shift, but I think in general gaming is one of those hobbies that do resist that... at least at the console level. PC caters to all types of gamers, from solitaire wizzes to farmville players and to FPS experts...

Sometimes I wonder if the industry wants to stay the same or is going more mainstream/casual. To me, gaming has always been one of those obscure hobbies that not everyone likes to do or relates to... so thankfully, that nerdy-ness has resisted some of the more mainstream players... I dunno, it made me sad to kinda think about the possibility that that could happen in the future, but at the same time, I guess it's in some ways inevitable as a lot more generations become tech savvy...

Re-Edit: To be clear, I don't think that gaming as it is has turned totally mainstream . It has become moreso than the past. My thread discusses about the possibility of a total shift to be completely watered down and mainstream. I.e. completely appeals to general populace, forgets the roots of gaming, no more 'hardcore' gamers, etc...

In the future?

mmm, I'm not a good writer, but read the OP.

This transformation from niche to mainstream has already started: FPS games now pretty much always have rechargeable health (L4D is one exception), it is now impossible to get stuck in Zelda games, Dead Space got rid of its core element since it supposedly scared away the masses, Banjo-Kazooie turned into a racer in a weak attempt to broaden its audience, losing all your extra lives in Mario games is impossible (maybe that's just me though), Halo 4 was made more fast paced than previous entries to mimic Call of Duty, single player games in general are adding (often) lazy and unneeded multiplayer features, etc., etc.

The future is already here.

no. yes. And it was Starbucks, not Seattle coffee ._.

I think Ryan and THE1 hit the nail on it's head as you cool folk would say.

As with any industry, they try hard to make money. What makes them money? People. People buy games that are well known and are spread by word of mouth. What is this called? "Mainstreaming" an industry...

The Wii and XB360/PS3 really were great proof of this already happening. The Wii capitalized on the Mainstream market (or, "Casuals") with it's easy to play titles and over all "lifestyle" type games. (Not all of them were like this, of course.)
The XB360/PS3 capitalized on the Mainstream market by providing major multimedia experiences such as NetFlix and Hulu. (Plus a bunch of other downloadable services that make you more (or less) connected to other people.)

This is already happening.

You could have just as well used a picture of an Xbox 360. Compare the difficulty of most old arcade games/NES games with any games today.

Agreed. Like you and others have said, I've pretty much accepted that it will someday happen that there may be a point where the original base who made the industry are forgotten and we see watering down to pop music levels. I don't think we're quite that far down yet. That was the point of my post... are we heading there with all these "quotes" and people talking about wanting to drag in casual market. It has more to do with monetizing the base than trying to innovate I think.

As it stands now though, we still have some of my generation still playing and they need people like us to encourage the next generation to become gamers. It's kinda harder to get other people to join in if all they know how to do is game on a cell phone...but I think as the populace becomes more tech savvy, the trend will only grow towards that direction.

I think, at first, there was a streak of innovation in the fact of entering a more "Mainstream" market. The Wii was surely innovative. So was the great online that the PS3/XB360 offered. Overall though, they took it a step too far. They saw how this could affect sales and they took to it.

Affect sales adversely or in a good way?

I thought the gaming industry always kinda resisted the mainstream to the full extent, just because there is a mild technology barrier and you will find a lot of eccentric things in comparison to other industries... not everyone can easily pick up a controller and be like "Oh I love this, I will keep playing". It's definitely catered to people of certain tastes... and then obviously it requires an initial investment versus playing on something you probably already easily own.