when the ps came out sony expanded the market 10 fold. people who never played the nes were playing ps. nintendo tried that with the wii but they were going after an older demographic. sony got teens to play games and turned them into hardcore gamers. nintendo has stayed the course of ninty games. they never tried to get ps gamers like ms did. there lack of vision of online gaming,rts, and fps has basically made nintendo uncool. they never came out with a new idea that would entice teens and twenty somethings to play ninty games. they never grew up with therir audience basically.

What is hardcore though? Playing Mario games doesn't make you hard core. Playing Zelda games doesn't either. Playing cod doesn't either. Halo? Nope. Uncharted nope? It's not about the games you play its about the passion and love you have for them. At least Imo. So I don't get when people try to act like a genre or type of games is less hardcore 

The term hardcore gamer is a joke. I was just trying to adapt my message to the thread.
 In essence what i was trying to say is that the gamers that played with Nintendo in past years have not abandoned them.

Bold: Agreed. Tired of people saying I play cod I'm so hardcore. Or I play rpg's I'm so hard core. I think the term would be good for measuring passion in gaming but not the way it's used now. Underline: I disagree. Some Nintendo fans have completely abandoned them. Evidenced by decreasing sales. However I would say that yes, the true fans that love Nintendo games have not abandoned them :) 

hardcore is defined by how much time you dedicate to playing games. NOT the kind of game. Now there are certain types of games that lend itself better to longer play times or series wiht more rabbid followings. Your average person isnt to to play Just Dance for hours on end as someone would play COD, Street Fighter or Fallout but they COULD

For semantic reasons I think we all know that in these arguments when these terms are used it generally under these definitions:

Casual - Player of fringe/low level play ability. Plays mostly "casual" titles like Angry Birds, Candy Crush, Tetris, maybe venturing out as far as say Mario Kart as their most complex gaming experience. Likes games but isn't obsessed with them, doesn't follow the industry, don't really care about "beating" a game, like to get the high score though. Games are a fun little time burner, not something to be taken seriously. Low level skill, don't like games that are too complex or confusing, generally don't like hyper violent games either (Candy Crush not Grand Theft Auto). Drove the Wii Sports/Fit/Kinect crazes for a while before moving on to smart devices.

Hardcore - Generally speaking males aged 11-35 year old though there are women who also make up this group. Like to play games with more advanced play mechanics than smartphone/mini-game titles. Generally favor these genres -- shooters, action games, 3D platformers, racers, sports games, RPGs etc. Can also enjoy simpler games but prefer the deeper/more complex games, enjoy features like online play and competition. Knowledge of industry can range but they generally know things like Mario is only on Nintendo systems, a Playstation is not an XBox, Calladooty every November, all the way up to religiously following events like E3, etc. etc.

Nintendo Hardcore - Subset of the general hardcore gamer, except they love Nintendo franchises and are active in buying Nintendo product now (not as in "I loved Zelda on the Super NES" type thing). Not just Mario (as a casual gamer would), but some combination of Metroid and Zelda and Pokemon and Smash Brothers etc. The more hardcore even go for F-Zero, Pilotwings, Wave Race, Mother/Earthbound, etc. This group has been shrinking since the 90s, but remains staunchly loyal to Nintendo (well Mario and Zelda and Pokemon at least).

As always, nothing is Nintendo's fault. If they put out a product that doesn't sell and no one wants, it's consumers lack of imagination and not Nintendo's mediocre product. 3rd parties abandoned Nintendo because they're mean and have something against Nintendo, not because Nintendo puts no emphasis on 3rd party games. So little in fact that the Nintendo faithful always rinses and repeats the old adage: "I don't care about 3rd parties as long as Nintendo keeps having the best exclusives."

See, Nintendo decided to go after the fringe gamer with Wii. Gamers that, for the most part, aren't in fact gamers. The company maintained focus on its top franchises but ignored everything else. No hardcore gamer wants WiiFit and Nintendogs with a little (more) dumbed down Call Of Duty and Madden sprinkled in between. Nearly none of the big multiplats succeed on Nintendo consoles. Beyonetta II is said to be a great game yet it's moved roughly 400k on a console with an 8 million install base. If Nintendo would have made the very same game with Princess Zelda or Samus in Beyonetta's spot the game would've moved massive numbers. So I guess there it's more sensible to blame hardcore Nintendo fans for thinking little of anything Non-Nintendo rather than blaming Nintendo itself.

Finally, When local news stations started raffling off Wii like they'd do the cool, gimmick holiday toy I called it about how Wii would move like hotcakes but would ruin Nintendo in the long run. Fast forward some 10 years later, either no one who's owned Wii knows what happened to theirs or they aren't willing to dig through their storage closet to pull it out. They've either moved on XBOX One or PS4. Or have "moved on" in the biblical sense. But they've most likely not moved on to WiiU.

I have a huge problem with the hardcore gamer term... I just want to play frikkin fun games. Be it gimmicky, couch play, online play solo play or what not.

To me it sounds hardcore gamer sounds nothing but elitists nonsense.

I don't accept the argument because your two premises don't look accurate. You're just taking assumptions and drawing conclusions without any evidence.

1. What exactly do you mean by this? How is the Wii U more "hardcore" than the Wii? How is the Wii less "hardcore" than any other console Nintendo released? 

2. What exactly is this "hardcore audience" that supposedly abandoned Nintendo in droves? Could you please define this audience, because I disagree. Do you mean people who like Call of Duty and such? Because at least a third of them haven't even hit puberty yet, most of those sorts of gamers weren't even born before the N64 launched. In other words, the so-called "hardcore audience" or the "1337 d00ds" as they used to call themselves, were never Nintendo fans. They're also not hardcore by any means, they're just a bunch of socially-awkward ugly guys who want to call themselves something cool to make up for the fact that they're not.

1. This is actually what Nintendo said. They were going for a more core audience.  This is why the Wii U has less "blue ocean" games compared to the Wii, and the ones it does have aren't as popular because Nintendo barely promotes them.

2. A hrdcore gamer is someone who can beat Ikaruga 2 player all by himself. Jk lol. In all seriousness a hardcore audience is someone who plays games as a hobby, rather than just for fun (like saying playing 30 minutes of Wii Sports or Candy Crush a day). Someone who at least kind of follows the industry. For example, when the Wii was released, the killer apps for "non" and "casual" gamers were Wii Sports, Madden NFL Football, Wii Play, and Rayman Rabbids. For the more "hardcore audience" it was Zelda: TP, Red Steel, Call of Duty 3, and Monkey Ball.

The problem is even a lot of the adults that were once Nintendo fans have abandoned Nintendo in droves. As mentioned earlier, the GameCube sold 22 million, the Wii U will likely barely hit 18-20 million if it's lucky. The Dreamcast has outsold the Wii U so far, and the Dreamcast is the DEFINITION of fans abandoning a system.