NJ5; are you seriously suggesting that housewives and the elderly will play games GTa and Halo or Gran Turismo in the near future?
It seems you're arguing only for the sake of argument and because kingofwale is the one you're arguing with.
More focus on casual market does not benefit hardcore market, its like saying that high sales of Toyota Corolla benefits the sales of Ferrari or that cheap, available clothing makes expensive clothing sell more. Less than sound logic imo.
When an industry sees a window of opportunity to make easy cash, they will of course take it rather than gamble on expensive projects that may not even finance themselves through sales.
We've seen the movie and TV and music industry promote this motto of making quantity over quality (undying TV shows, more and more stupid movies filled with stereotypes and thousands of record artists sounding exactly alike).
How is this a turn for the better for someone who is enthusiastic about them and loves it? Seeing your favourite pasttimes deteriorate before your eyes does not instill optimism, at least not with me.
In the end, mainstream media turns shallow and uninteresting and turns into a guessing contest over what the unstable masses want next rather than develop sound and steady platforms of media with quality, experience and well thought out content.
If the gaming market in ten years is 90% casual and 10% "hardcore", which group will get the love and consequently the bigger budgets and attention?
I shiver at the thought of the last entertaining media going shaite and mainstream only to kill originality (don't give me "oh but teh 9000 FPS games!" sentence again, please) and love for the game (literally).
