Casuals rules this world.

Very well written my friend. Glad that you wrote it up so quickly!

Good job!

I suppose that if you don't really get a discussion it's because you're absolutely right.

One thing that bothers me is the perception that you cannot be hardcore, loving mini-games collections and hating first-person shooters like I do.

great points...

one huge indicator for ps3/360 is how gta is selling after the first 10 weeks....if it isn't then they have lost mainstream gamers and can start working on their next model asap

 I disagree with the 'casuals are lifeblood'.  As you can see in most of his example, the majority of the games sold within the first 2 months, implying I think, as he did, that the more hardcore was picking it up.  Now, for the Wii, and to a lesser extent the handhelds, I think C being lifeblood is true, but only because of the type of games.  And as mentioned, any game with legs is probably going more towards c. than not.

 ...but here's the rub.  in the movie industry the high budget films (transformers, harry potter) are always targeted to the mainstream audience while niche movies (juno, sicko) are given smaller budgets to compensate.  now the state of the video game right now is the opposite.  mainstream gamers seem to be flocking to the wii while hardcore flock to the ps3/360.  

if you're a big company like EA maybe you can afford to throw games with huge budgets at the hardcore niche and pay for them with low budget games for the mainstream.  but what about developers like epic, square, naughty dog.  if you only make hardcore big budget games how can you afford to stay in business.  answer is you can't and we're going to see a lot of "consolidation" this generation and i don't think consolidation is a good thing for innovation in games.

@ Stever89 - my favorite line of you piece.  "How can companies stay profitable and healthy if they can’t reach every demographic, because certain demographics are pushed aside for the “supreme” demographic, the hardcore players?"  

 and i thought i was the only one.  ./hug fellow hardcore casual gamer.

Yeah the point was to show that many hardcore players buy the game sooner rather than later after a game comes out. Of course some mainstream users might pick up the game as well, so it's hard to say how many of the first 10 weeks sales were hardcore users and how many were mainstream.

And both GH2 and Lego Star Wars sold more after the first 10 weeks, suggesting that more mainstream users were buying those games than hardcore users. And those were only some examples, as I mentioned. Every single game that sells decently (anything about 250k probably) after the first 10 weeks can almost exclusively thank mainstream users for those extra sales. Kingdom Hearts wouldn't have even topped a million in Japan if it wasn't for the mainstream audience.

And it's not so much how many were sold after the first 10 weeks, it's how much more profit do those extra sales bring? When I say "lifeblood" I was referring to the financial stability that casuals bring into the market. Not that many of the games that I mentioned couldn't have been profitable without mainstream users, but they wouldn't have been as profitable, and might not have warrented a sequel.

Gran Turismo 4 sold 1.5 million in NA first 10 weeks, then sold another 1.2 million after the first 10 weeks. Profitable at 1.5 million in NA? Yes. More profitable at 2.72 in NA? Hell yes. Even Killzone only sold 300kin NA first ten weeks, but was able to reach 750k after a year or so. There might not even have been a Killzone 2 if it weren't for mainstream users, because 350k (probably want it would have sold without mainstream users). In this case, mainstream users can almost certainly be considered the lifeblood of the industry.

And like I pointed out in my original post, if you would add up the sales of every single traditional hardcore game, and then add a few million for copies still on store shelves, I bet they would just barely make it to 50% of the total software shipments for the PS2. The mere fact that every game in those 6 series that I mentioned (GTA, GT, FF, MGS, KH, DQV) barely made it to 10% of the total shipments, I could hardly believe that the rest of the games (which won't be as big as these) could make up an additional 40%, which would just show how much "mainstream" games take up of the market. This wouldn't be an exact science anyway, because casuals would buy every single game you put on that list... and I have no idea how one would compensate for that.

For the recond, here's a link to Sony's financial's that state cumulative software shipments through March 2007.

And also for the record, one user in the Others Weekly Charts said:

He obvsiouly doesn't know that SpongeBob: Battle sold 1.5 million on the PS2... And he didn't read my thread (which I posted twice in the Others weekly charts), because I have the reason for this (taken directly from my original post):

To sum it up: Lack of (good) hardcore titles on the Wii make it look like mainstream games are (only) selling really well, and lack of a high userbase on the PS3/360 side makes it look like mainstream games are selling better. In other words, one system has the userbase, but doesn't have the games, while the other (two) have the games, but not the userbase, nor the casuals.

It's actually a lose/lose situation for just about everyone involved. Hardcore developers can't have the sales they would like, while also having higher costs. Sony and Microsoft can't be as highly profitable as they'd like without highly successful software sales. And Nintendo can't get people to STFU about not "catering to the hardcore" even when the bring out as many games as they can, while also trying to cater to the mainstream users. I mean, this year Nintendo should have: SSB:B, MarioKart Wii, Zelda, Mario, Tales of Symphonia, Disaster: Day of Crisis, Fragile, and many others that I won't even bother to mention. Nintendo can't do it alone. 3rd parties have to release some hardcore games too. And they are coming this year.

I had a friend who owned a PS2 for mainstream/casual gaming. Just football games and GTA etc. I accidently introduced him to Contra 3 and he loved it. I mean, REALLY loved it. Then I got him into Gitaroo man and he loved that too!

 I'm not saying that these games are better than the games he was playing before, because he's the only "casual" I've ever successfully "converted" (I use "" because I don't make a habit of forcing my tastes upon people!) The point is he was a "hardcore" gamer all along, it was just he didn't realise it because he'd never had the chance to play these games.

There's probably a point in here somewhere in this anecdote, but I'm not really sure what it is. Also, would the industry benefit from going single format like CDs or DVDs?