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Forums - Sales Discussion - The hardcore console market seems to be shrinking

DarthMetalliCube on 01 August 2019
S.Peelman said:
I don’t think it’s this black and white. Not all owners of a system are either casual or hardcore. The PS2 for example has a sizeable amount of what you’d call ‘casuals’ on there and there’s ‘hardcore gamers’ mingled in on Nintendo as well, so how are we going to determine how big the ‘hardcore market’ actually is?

Yeah, as I've been saying for like 15 years - these are just mostly bs marketing labels, and a way for gamers who play a lot to sound "cool." It was additionally a way to try and explain and in a sense discredit the success of the Wii by the industry and games media, as this console had largely gone against the industry standard of how they viewed gaming was "supposed to be."

The titles are so ambiguous it's virtually meaningless. It's like, what's your specific metric that makes a "hardcore" gamer? The amount you game? The TYPES of games? consoles? PC? What if someone plays strictly basic mobile games like Candy Crush or Pokemon Go, but play those a TON. What if gamers just "casually" play Far Cry, Wolfenstein, Assassin's Creed, etc..  

I'm a living contradiction of these terms - I only really play a select few games (plus a lot of indies I have to review), but out of those, I often log/have logged in an INSANE amount of hours into them (Overwatch, Gears, Smash Bros, Minecraft, Starcraft, etc). I also really enjoy the goofy type of party/fitness/dance etc types that are considered to be more "casual" - like Just Dance, Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Mario Party, Mario Kart, etc.. while much of the Sony-style cinematic games are just not for me. So does that make me "causal" or hardcore? 



 

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mutantsushi on 03 August 2019

Please help me make a poll, I don't know how...

"Is Lenny93 clowning...

A) himself
B )everybody else
C)both A and B
D)switch is a hardcore console

Thank you...

⚠️ WARNED: Flaming ~ CGI

Last edited by CGI-Quality - on 03 August 2019

Stellar_Fungk on 03 August 2019

We Switch players are also hardcore.



I am a Nintendo fanatic.

Stellar_Fungk on 03 August 2019

We Switch players are also hardcore gamers. Show some respct to over 30 years of gaming culture, please.



I am a Nintendo fanatic.

Lenny93 on 03 August 2019
Stellar_Fungk said:

We Switch players are also hardcore gamers. Show some respct to over 30 years of gaming culture, please.

Switch is the only console I own aside from the 3DS, I mean no disrespect I just hastily called the pair "hardcore" because I couldn't think of anything else at the time.



Sales prediction, PS4: 122 Million, Xbox one: 50 million, Switch: 105 million. 

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DonFerrari on 03 August 2019
Stellar_Fungk said:

We Switch players are also hardcore gamers. Show some respct to over 30 years of gaming culture, please.

Certainly switch have many hardcore fans and some game for over 30 years. But as all platforms it have a hefty of casuals.

I would infer that generally the Nintendo fan is more hardcore than the Xbox/PS, you can see that on the attach ratio of the major IPs on Nintendo. But the full customer base on Xbox/PS is more hardcore than on Nintendo and you see that on the attach ratio for the whole platform.



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Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

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Nautilus on 03 August 2019

Why are you ignoring Nintendo hardwares?



My (locked) thread about how difficulty should be a decision for the developers, not the gamers.

https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=241866&page=1

Mnementh on 03 August 2019
Lenny93 said:

PS2 + OG Xbox = 182.33 Million.

PS3 + 360 = 173.21 Million.

PS4 + One projected sells = 164 million, 48 million for Xbox one and 116 million for PS4.

Or do you think that these 2 will eventually match or surpass the previous generation before them?

Please! The console of Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero, Buzz!, Singstar, ... shall be hardcore?

So, the harcore for this gen was Gamecube+Xbox = 29M. Hardcore console gaming grew massively since then!



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VAMatt on 03 August 2019
Farsala said:
Less consoles, but more profit per console. Also, it is essentially flat in my book. A lot of consoles in the 6th and 7th gen had hardware issues.

Yes, there were many replacement consoles inflating the numbers last gen.  

On the other hand, upgrade consoles affect the numbers for this gen.  I guess many of the old ones end up in the used market, which does expand the base.  But, certainly some end up just collecting dust in the closet.  



konkari on 03 August 2019

I don't think the "hard core" console market is in decline. Considering PS2 was sold as a DVD player, and PS3 as Blue Ray player (XBox was also trying to push some new format). In this gen, there is no market for movie players, so the sales is more representative to core console market. If you sum up PS4, XB1 and NSW, I think the market is even slightly growing.