No, most don't care. All my friends are mainstream gamers and from my experience living in college dorms, I can safely say that mainstream gamers only care about a select few games. If there isn't a commercial for the game, or if the series isn't well established (Resident Evil, Mario, Street Fighter, etc.), they're not interested.

That isn't to say, they wouldn't like hardcore or less known games. I remember going to GameStop years ago with my friends and the had Shadow of the Colossus playing in one of their systems. One of my friends started playing, just riding around on the horse. He was basically mesmerized and said, "We need to start gettin games like this, Joe." I replied, "I bought that a month ago."

Side Note: None of my friends are named Joe. Joe is synonymous with "Dude" or "Bro" to the native Chicagoan.

Why do you ask if you already know the answer?
lol, no.

In that case I think you're thinking of bro gamers, not mainsteam gamers.  Are you really suggesting Mario or Pokemon isn't mainstream?

"No one seriously looks forward to another Mario game. I.E wait in lines at night, only game they buy that year" Well, since people ONLY played Wii Sports on the Wii, yes, Mario is the only game they buy. /sarcasm

You mistake caring for "having the time for"

A father with a demanding career and family would be lucky to play 3 full retail games per year. Lets not lash out at them because they are more successful :P

My eye opening experience was visiting cousins last year and the teenage boy had an X-Box 360 with

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Gears of War, Gears of War 2, Gears of War 3, Halo 3, Halo Reach, Halo: ODST, Madden 2010 and Madden 2012

That was the whole library and I just remember thinking "If this is the next generation of gamers, we have absolutely nothing in common" which is baffling to me that the market has grown so large whole segments of it elude me.