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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - "The Great Hardcore Lie Exposed: Wii Did Not Lose Core Gamers"

Jay520 said:
What does "core" gamers refer to with Nintendo? Gamecube fans?


Well what does core refer to anyway?  I mean is the typical COD gamer a core gamer? No he is more of a mainstream gamer.

Is Uncharted a core game? Its way to easy.

For example online competition in games has nothing to do with the game itself so a multiplayer game is not core just because there is random people who can kick someones ass. I can find random people (in the real world) who can kick my ass in Wii Sports so  competition is no aspect of being core or not.

And  when people would say "iit has to be online  offline competition does not count"  that doesnt make sense since arcades had no online mode and arcade games are mostly hardcore. (its the business model   make a game hardcore so people have to waste quarters alot)


Stuff like  Deathsmiles on Xbox360 is hardcore. Or games like  bit trip runner. 

People just cant get over the fact that Nintendo can make games with COLOR because they base their adulthood/masculinity on violence, nude skin, brown/ grey and realism.   People who think this way never grew up because they still care about what others think of them.


The thing is we should finally drop that artificial definitions of casual and core and whatnot. Because people always use the terms but noone actually knows what they mean.

The only real difference is  games either are accessible or not.   Angry birds space is accessible but its actually really challenging. So we have a problem here since its not casual but people say it is and according to them its def not core. (but then it actually is by the original definition of hardcore since it requires more time and skill to master than most "core" games)



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Nintendo lost the core around the year 2000.

About the time when people got tired of playing GoldenEye for the 10000th time and realized there were about 10x more games on the Playstation, even the most ardent NES/Super NES fans at that point jumped ship and bought a Playstation as their primary console.

By the time the PS2 had come out and the XBox had arrived, I think Nintendo in effect kind of just gave up even trying all that hard for that crowd. When Resident Evil exclusivity couldn't salvage the GameCube, I think Nintendo realized it would take a lot of effort to win this audience back and decided to simply not even bother. Cut ties with Factor 5/Silicon Knights/etc. and in large part they cut back on third party deals collaborations too (ie: Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes, F-Zero GX, Mario in NBA Street, Capcom 5, etc.).

That was the whole point of the Wii, to go in a dramatically different direction and chase different consumer bases (ie: women, fitness junkies, seniors, hipsters/lapsed gamers). That's where the Wii brought in new customers for Nintendo.

The problem is Nintendo didn't know how to keep the casual audience interested either, and has been watching in horror as much of that crowd has gravitated to cheap smartphone and tablet gaming. So now they're kinda trying to step back towards the core, while still trying to be open to casuals, but they're far apart from both groups right now.



What i see is that pre wii nintendo consoles were used by the children/teenagers of the house, just like any system. when the wii came, the tradicional audience kept using it and playng the tradicional "core" games, the difference is that the adults and even elderly of the house used the system too.

there were the new kind of simpler "casual" games starting with the wii.

were they more succesfull than "core" titles on the wii? definetely

were the core titles less sucessfull than previous nintendo consoles? NO

nintendo core franchises sold more than ever on the wii and a huge number of core third party titles sold at least 500k. if anything, the core audience was raised on the wii.



Zero999 said:

What i see is that pre wii nintendo consoles were used by the children/teenagers of the house, just like any system. when the wii came, the tradicional audience kept using it and playng the tradicional "core" games, the difference is that the adults and even elderly of the house used the system too.

there were the new kind of simpler "casual" games starting with the wii.

were they more succesfull than "core" titles on the wii? definetely

were the core titles less sucessfull than previous nintendo consoles? NO

nintendo core franchises sold more than ever on the wii and a huge number of core third party titles sold at least 500k. if anything, the core audience was raised on the wii.

I think you're reaching there. Most people did buy the Wii to have a casual/party game experience.

But pretty much every core gamer augmented the Wii by also having either a PS3/360 for games like Call of Duty, Bio Shock, Arkham Asylum, Red Dead Revolver, GTAIV, Dead Rising, Battlefield 3, Madden NFL, FIFA, etc. etc. etc.

Also not all Nintendo franchises really benefitted all that much from the Wii userbase. Mario certainly did, but Mario is a very good "bridge" title. A lot of Nintendo's more "hardcore" franchises though -- Zelda, Metroid, etc. really didn't sell any better than they did on the N64 or GCN days, certainly not relative to the increase in userbase. Things like The Last Story and Xenoblade had such a limited market, that NOA didn't even bother to localize them initially (they eventually gave in to a very limited Xenoblade print run).



Whatever helps you sleep at night.



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Soundwave said:

Also not all Nintendo franchises really benefitted all that much from the Wii userbase. Mario certainly did, but Mario is a very good "bridge" title. A lot of Nintendo's more "hardcore" franchises though -- Zelda, Metroid, etc. really didn't sell any better than they did on the N64 or GCN days, certainly not relative to the increase in userbase. Things like The Last Story and Xenoblade had such a limited market, that NOA didn't even bother to localize them initially (they eventually gave in to a very limited Xenoblade print run).

Twilight Princess on Wii sold more than the Gamecube version and Wind Waker put together.

Goldeneye 007 on Wii sold almost as much as GC's three 007 games put together. In fact, FPS games sold much better on Wii, with 5 crossing the million mark compared to 0 on the GC. (Or 6 to 2 if you count the Metroid Prime games)

Resident Evil 4 sold more on Wii than GC despite being a 2-year-old port.



Walkthrublazer3 said:
oniyide said:
Walkthrublazer3 said:
 

A core game is a core game. It doesn't matter if it's a third, second, or first party game. Super Mario Bros. The Legend of Zelda, and Smash Bros. are core gaming franchises. All of these series saw an increase in sales compared to the previous generation. This means that there were more core gamers who bought the Wii then Gamecube. The belief by many is that Nintendo abandoned the core gamer and was only successful because all of the new casual players who bought it only to play games like Wii sports. If this were true, then games like Smash Bros. Brawl would have sold less then Melee, which of course isn't the case.

3rd party companies are to blame for their own poor sales. Most of them offered half-baked games with mediocre gameplay, Nintendo's own core games were far suprerior to them. 3rd parties created a reputation of releases watered down low effort, or just bad games. Dead Space Extraction, Red steel, and the on rails Resident Evil games are good examples. It's not Nintendo's fault that 3rd parties put in a low effort for core games on the Wii. Therefore 3rd parties aren't even revelent to this discussion. Remember this article is about core gamers abandoning the Wii and Nintendo.

Besides, that's like saying, the N64 and Gamecube are both casual systems since both had poor 3rd party support and poor 3rd party sales.

Lastly, Nintendo Fans are core gamers. You can't discredit us simply because we enjoy Nintendo games. This is what Rol meant by Damage control, and bending and redifing terms. You're trying to disprove this article and argument by claiming Nintendo games aren't core games therefore all the the increase in sales is because of New Nintendo fans and not core gamers. When in reality Nintendo fans and core gamers are one in the same.

 

If a system sells more its going to...wait for it, sell more games, thats just common sense. I never said that Ninty abandoned the core i dont agree with those who said, if anyone read what i wrote i even said they made the same types of games they always made and added, the WIisports and such and those games generally speaking sold way more than even Ninty's core games. 

Again this isnt about who is to blame since i never even brought that up all i said the article was flawed since it ignored those games which make up most of the library and no if you are trying to prove that core gamers didnt abandon the Wii you have to actually account for the ENTIRE library, the fact that they dont address 3rd party games in a discussion about a console, shows that something aint adding up. Ninty fans are not going to abandon the console. Again its not about whose fault is what. WHy do people keep going there?

Would you consider those people who bought the WIi solely for WiiSPorts, FIt and the like as core gamers? WOuld you consider them Ninty fans? ARe you really going to sit there and say the WIi wasnt popular because it atrracted non traditional gamers? Even though numbers show thats the kind of games that sold the best, this is why looking at 3rd party is important because they made a lot of those WIiType games and they sold well. Its like people want to ignore that segment for some reason. And as you say the core games 3rd party did make were watered down so dont you think that some people would have gotten a system that that wasnt the case? Not saying they stopped playing Wii altogeter.

1. And if the "core" games sales go up then.. wait for it, the core audience has increased. The fact that Wii sports and the like are the best selling games doesn't disprove that the system only had a casual audience. The core audience was strong on the Wii as evidenced by the "core" games.

2. You really have this obsession with 3rd party games don't you. Like as if they're all important.Well on Nintendo platforms there really not that important. Look, while I agree it would have been nice to have some 3rd party data in the article, it really doesn't make much of a difference if 3rd party "core" games sales were poor. We already have evidence that Nintendo's first party games sold exponetially better then previous generations. So if the "core" gamer didn't buy 3rd party Wii games they just abandoned them for the first party wii games or went to the 360 and PS3. It still doesn't change the fact that more "core" games sold on the Wii then previous Nintendo systems.

3. I consider those people to be casual and non Nintendo fans. I agree that the Wii was popular because it attracted non traditional gamers. It also attracted more core gamers then the gamecube or N64. I wan't bunching all the casuals who bought the Wii for Wii sports as Nintendo fans/core gamers. I was reffering to the gamer who likes and buys Nintendo's core franchises i.e Mario Kart, Smash Bros. Kirby.

1. Fair enough. Never said it only had a casual audience just that the audience is bigger than the core.

2. Im not obsessed with anything, but you cant discount it since it takes up the majority of a consoles's library. But yeah they went PS360

3. Fair enough.