I'm confused. How does capturing a relatively small segment of the population help them. The real question should be, "How can Nintendo recapture the casual audience?".

If your looking to sell systems, you have to have something that appeals to everyone....  Not the hardcore

Who is the hardcore audience? Males 21-35? People who spend the most? People interested in powerful hardware for graphics? People who play a lot?

If the question is one of customers who buy a lot of games, Nintendo's had higher attach rates with the kiddie Gamecube and Wii than ever before. And they're not far behind PS360. We're talking like 9 games per Wii vs. 10 games per PS360.

WiiU will never draw in hardware fetishists, and it's too late for WiiU to be dudebro-cool. I think Nintendo still has an audience that buys a good amount of games and plays them, because even the Wii casuals did apparently. I think Nintendo just needs to focus on sales at all at not this notion of the hardcore audience that I'm not sure really exists.

Nintendo never went for a hardcore/aggressive nerd audience. There is nothing to recapture.

Did they lose the hardcore audience? Thats news to me. I thought they lost the wannabe hardcore people that everyone knows as mainstream  well actually scratch that they never had those  so there is nothing to recapture.

I'm with the "this question is a little silly" group

if you ask me hardcore gamers should already have the Wii U

what you might have meant to ask is "how do they capture the attention of casual gamers", ones that only buy super popular titles that always sell millions and the such but never anything else (and therefore only buy a couple games a year, often times not even investing a lot of time into some of them or else only investing their time into them, e.g. getting addicted to CoD multiplayer)

in which case I say they don't lol, leave that to the PS4 and Xbone which people will fight over

they need great games that can be showcased and such, the ones you'd want to show to your friends or talk to them about, like Zelda U, a good 3D Metroid game that stuns and causes hype, or the upcoming MK8 and SSB4.

Other games like X, Bayo 2, etc. are all great but for the casual gamer they aren't really interesting enough to sell a console, they feel like they can miss out on it because those games aren't super big or well-known IPs where they'll feel like they're missing out if they don't get them

(you could argue Metroid isn't either but people have been craving that so much that they'd be appealing to a ton of people anyhow)

In short, they just need to pump out more quality games and faster, and they need to not put faith in Mario (overused) or smaller IPs that won't stir hype because they don't have a legacy of greatness or renown or anything

not that I don't want to see some new games too but from a sales-perspective it's just really hard for a new IP to break through unless it's a total masterpiece or the like

those new games are what you do after you've gotten gamer's attentions, IMO, right now Nintendo doesn't even have a lot of people's attention (the casual's attentions, hardcore gamers have a lot to look forward to and should have a great collection of Wii U games already, IMO)

Define "hardcore"...if you mean people who are buying CoD, AC and GTA, they can't do that with WiiU, that ship has sailed long time ago.

If you mean mainstream, as in audience that Nintendo once catered to...well, mainstream is these days pretty much same as "hardcore", so again, they can't do it with WiiU.

So unless meaning of mainstream drastically changes in the future they can either:

- search for another Blue ocean
or
- design their next home console to be on the similar level of performance and appeal as next MSony offerings

Yup! That totally makes sense!

nintendo never lost the core audience. and they will not lose it with the wii u
look at the "big" games that came first for the wii u.
zelda WWHD, w101, pikmin 3. all core games. WW is just a fantastic game, the zelda nobody wanted but everybody loves, thats a big middle finger to all who said WW is an ugly bad game that kills zelda.
W101 is a nice try to use the wiiu gamepad, and its hard as shit.
and pikmin is just a little art piece, u realy get sucked in the world of the pikmin.
3 games for the hardcore gamers that play games because they love it as an artform.

the problem is, there are not sooo many coregamer out there an a console just for the core gamer dont realy works. and nintendo shouldnt try to make the wii u just for the core gamers. we are 25+, sure we will buy the next nintendo console anyway. but u cant plan ur future just on the core gamers. u have to light the fire in kidsfor future generations of consoles.

If every hardcore gamer bought a Wii U, and nobody else did, Wii U would be even more doomed than it is now.

I wrote "other"

Where is the option "release VR set for WiiU"

(and like fox wrote.. The "Hardcore" is a very litle part of Video game users.. the ones who gets the "casual" (the ones that just wanna have fun and play exiting games) will sell 10 times more..