I guess not since I exclusively play VR nowadays, liked the WiiU over the Wii and Switch and enjoy niche games more than blockbusters. But I'm getting GTA 6 to come up out of VR for a bit.

I'm playing Mario and Luigi Brothership right now, a game that IGN gave a 5 score. That score put me off from buying it when it came out, but I bought it on a whim for $27 on sale. I don't believe the game sold very well, and the game is fantastic, the market and media was wrong about this game.

That's a good question. I'm not sure.

Sometimes I'm very aligned with the market. The best game ever made, to me, is Breath of the Wild, which scored a 97 on Metacritic and sold over 35 million units. Sometimes I'm way out of sync. Consider Grand Theft Auto VI, a game that's obliterating all sort sof pre-order records, but which isn't in my top 10 most wanted. I love big tentpole franchises like Super Mario and Resident Evil, but haven't played Call of Duty since WWII and haven't touched Fortnite since 2017.

In terms of consoles, I think I'm more firmly in lockstep with the general population. The best-selling consoles tend to be the best. I consider Switch and PS2 to be 1a and 1b. But there are outliers. The success of PSP still boggles my mind. And I don't know how WiiU failed so spectacularly with games like Bayonetta 2, Pikmin 3, Tropical Freeze, Mario Kart 8, and Super Mario 3D World.

I have a broad taste, sometimes it will align with the market, sometimes it wont. I dont feel theres really a pattern.

For hardware, more often than not. Probably the reverse for software (much less often).

I liked the Vita and 3DS quite a lot, one did moderately well, the other failed. But my enjoyment of Nintendo’s home consoles more or less maps onto how well they did during their generation relative to the circumstances (so SNES didn’t sell as much as NES in total, but it did feel like it built on the popularity because it was selling more units on average across a much shorter generation). For sure, my interest in Nintendo declined drastically during the N64 era and came back during the DS and Wii era…and while the Wii U wasn’t much on my radar, I played so much Wii and Virtual Console classics that it didn’t get to the point where my interest in Nintendo really dropped off that much (but I did play a lot more Mac/mobile that generation, and much less so since the Switch).

For software, I’m more of a niche gamer, so I’d say 75% of the time, not. I still like some of the bigger hitters: modern Zelda, Mario Kart, Cyberpunk, Witcher, Animal Crossing, and motion games, but I’m also very much into indie and small studio retro remasters & remakes, RPGs, visual novels, strategy, and sandbox titles that very few people play, and that’s the bulk of what I do…

I’m also intrigued by VR but have yet to get into it. I did enjoy the AR push on mobile a few years ago, while it lasted… I think it mostly died when Coronavirus hit.

For successes, yes. Usually I can see why a game is successful. For failures, not always.

Well, this has been my preferred console, starting with NES.

NES, Genesis, N64, Xbox, Xbox 360, Wii-U, PS5.

So as you can see, only two times have I preferred the most popular console. Although for some of them, like Xbox and Xbox 360, it was a very close call. I loved Dreamcast, probably second most. And the PS2 library was insane. But both of them hard their problems. Dreamcast died too soon, and the PS2 had super weak hardware and the dreaded DRE problem. With 360, Wii was right there, as well. It was just so much fun playing Wii Sports and Wii Play with family and friends. Good memories.

But yeah. I usually prefer the console that isn't winning or most popular.

Depends on what is meant with market. I think with taste there is not 1 market.

US vs. Japan is a very different market as example.
Personally I'm not a fan of first person shooters, certainly not military shooters. That would align with the Japanese taste, but not with the US one.

Not into shooters or sports games. Barely ever played GTA games. I grew up with a GameCube and Wii U was the first console I had as an adult
I would say no.
But there are market trends or popular things in gaming I partake in. I have a Switch, Switch 2, PS4, and PS5. Those are all really popular.
I was into Animal Crossing when I suppose it was technically mainstream but not even close to now. I played Animal Crossing on GCN and Wild Word in 2007, before even City Folk let alone the hit New Leaf and megahit New Horizons.
Despite owning most Nintendo platforms, I've barely played Pokémon games.

I'm a retro and indie gamer since the early 2000's, because pretty much none of the publishers really create games for my taste, with some few exceptions (Dragon quest, Hearts of Iron, Baldur's Gate 3, Galactic Civilizations, plus some select Nintendo games), so no, they actually very rarely align