Nintendo Says There Is No Casual Gaming

Casual gaming? Whatever! This is no casual gaming, buster. Just ask Nintendo! It'll set you straight. Nintendo Europe's senior marketing director Laurent Fischer unloads:

Fischer doesn't like the word casual so much? Talk about an understatement.
No Casual Gaming [CVG] [Pic]

The terms hardcore/casual are always hard to define and vastly overused. For some people is it genre of game played, for others it is total amount of time, or total number of titles purchased.

For most people, a person who plays CoD4 for 3 hours a day is hardcore. Another person who plays Nintendogs/Brain Training for 3 hours a day is casual. Why the difference? That is what they are pointing out.

Heh, I'm hardcore, I play my Wii all the time YEA!

My friends casual he rarely plays his PS3! YEA!

That's about sums up that paradox.

PS3 is the hardcore machine - erk! PS3 is the device used to deliever what it was used to do.

Xbox != Shooters
PS3 != Epic
Wii != Party

Done, done and done! ZZzt quick question for this guy, why doesn nintendo channel give you the option of selecting Casual or Hardcore when grading a game
DERK!

is it about the complexity of the gameplay?

is casual two buttons? is hardcore a two analoge sticks, and 15 buttons? is super-hardcore a keyboard and mouse where each key does a different action?

just questions not statement. i'm thinking about the games i play as a 'hardcore' gamer and the games my girlfriend plays as a 'casual' gamer.

Err um, boom blox is casual - but it's so frustrating.

Wiimote adds motion sensing which is basically in boom blox more combinations than you can begin to imagine on a keyboard.

Err um so your questions answer is no buttons dun make hardcoreness.

I respectfully disagree with the semantics of the argument. You can always define something in the broadest sense possible. The reality is that we do not live in some vague dystopia where things are only judged in the most general sense. Sensible people in a sensible society delineate points of difference, and branch concepts into smaller groupings to make sensible judgments.

For example we have two dogs in our household, and we consider them to be members of the family. Now were a fire to break out, and I could save either one of the dogs or my niece. I would choose to save my niece there is a disparity in value. According to the generalist principle I must choose the most efficient safest save, or toss a coin. Nobody except for the mental degenerates will always choose the person rather then the pet.

The reality is we define values within our family structure. Our child takes precedence over our grandparents. Our spouse takes precedence over a cousin. We create and live within these parameters. We cannot consider everything of equal merit. Thus is the same with gaming.

We have created these terms, and they are justified. They highlight specific differences in play style. While there might not be specific numerical values we can generally identify a casual, core, or hardcore gamer. There being gray areas does not invalidate the concepts.

These comments are a mere justification on his part. Nintendo isn't hosing the core gamers or the hard core gamers. Instead they are making games for everyone which just isn't true at least to the extent it should be. Your never going to satisfy core or hardcore gamers by adding a higher difficulty setting. You can never please everyone by making a generic product that nobody can specifically relate with.

What he is talking about is directing games to the lowest common denominator, and adding higher difficulty levels for more refined consumers. That is like only creating programs like Dora the Explorer, and satisfying adults with a text bar on the bottom. I would say if this is Nintendo's grand strategy then they are on the fast track to disenfranchising themselves with core and hardcore gamers. Who desperately desire real complexity, and real subtext.

I would really hate to game in the world this guy envisions. A world where I can only play a Mario Party, and never a Mass Effect, Halo, or Resistance. I might be arrogant to assume that most on these forums wouldn't like that either. Well at least those that are very serious about their gaming.

^^

Your argument has weight. However he's mostly talking from a nintendo Point of veiw which usually desings games with an easy to understand for-everyone shell but a very hardcore interior. Tetris can be either casual fun or hardcore, mario brothers, mario kart, pokemon, an etc are the same way. His argument is that nintendo isnt about one or the other, but both.

If he doesn't like the word casual then he shouldn't use the term core gamer. Core gamer implies that there is at least another kind of gamer out there. His first sentence that there are gamers and non-gamers should of been he opening and closing sentence.

What a stupid pointless crock of poo this whole tedious argument has become. If it’s important to feel you are a hardcore gamer, OK I declare you a hardcore gamer. You want to be casual, OK you can be casual. You want to be a prune Danish, OK you’re a prune Danish. All human activity that involves a lot of people will be a continuum of interest and talents. Where do you draw the line. Most people will draw a line just behind where they are standing. When I was a teenager, 30 sounded old. When I was 30, 50 sounded old and I knew that 30 wasn’t. Now, 50 seems young. So wherever you draw the line there will be people less intense than you who consider themselves hardcore; and people on the other side that consider you too casual.

 Insisting on labeling people is never useful and always turns out to be divisive and leads to alienation. If you don’t think a particular console has games you like, buy a different one. Nothing in that exercise requires you to call people on the other system derisive names.

Besides, the Wii is almost half the market and almost double any other platform. The Wii will soon be drowning in games of every genre. And now that some game developers have found out that Miyamoto was correct when he said third parties would never be able to compete as long as they assigned third and fourth string talent, because Nintendo used only their first string; we are starting to see better quality more “hardcore” games. And this is the tip of the iceberg.

I don't like the hardcore/casual labels.

What I prefer is traditional or not, or perhaps just judge games on how difficult they are for new players.