Denial; Anger; Resentment and fear; Withdrawal and grieving; Acceptance; Action.

I see the consoles in three very distinct ways and have very different feelings towards the platforms when looking at them in each of the ways.

As far as pieces of technology and plastic that you can play videogames on the sales are pretty irrelevant. Each of these systems is very enjoyable and is quite a fun toy, and the sales of the console doesn’t really change this at all; the best and worst selling consoles of the previous generation (PS2 and Dreamcast) were both very fun systems and were cool toys to have.

In terms of corporate strategies I get some satisfaction from seeing the strategy of ‘inexpensive fun’ outperform the strategy of ‘exclusive interactive entertainment’ because I believe (over the past decade) the industry lost the focus on making games which are fun.

When I think about the annoying fanboys on the internet who respond to rational, well thought out arguments with incoherent gibberish it brings me a lot of pleasure to see them get frustrated and angry that the world does not work in the bizarre and twisted way they think it does.

My opinion is that neither of the HD consoles is failing. Look at the chart comparisons(sorry I can't post a link). The PS3 is pretty much mirroring the trajectory of the PS2 and the 360 is doing considerably better than the original Xbox. You can't consider that a failure as far as I'm concerned. What's skewing things in this gen is the unprecedented success of the Wii. We've never seen a home based console launch this successfully before, so there's nothing to compare it to. Nintendo seems to have caught lightning in a bottle here, but to say the other two are doing poorly, in my opinion, just isn't true. Everyone get's a gold star. And Nintendo will keep selling at these levels for the foreseeable future(I have my own theory about why, but I don't think it's appropriate for this topic).

I would hope that, as video game fans, people would be mature enough not to wish ill on any company making contributions to the further success of our hobby.

 Fail? LOL! Maybe individually they are not selling as well as the Wii, but combined they outnumber it. Just because you think the Wii is all casuals doesn't mean it's true. There are hardcore gamers on the Wii, there are hardcore gamers on 360, PS3, and PC. Hardcore gamers will always exist. Now, what makes a game, a "hardcore gamers" game? Nothing, there is no difference, all games are meant to be played, the only thing that seperates them from eachother is their genre. So to say that game in the future will be lower budget because of the sales of the Wii is quite frankly dumb.

You probably think Halo is a hardcore game, but is it? Not really, there's a campaign, and multiplayer, you can play it alot, or you can play it a little, just like SSBB, just like Mario Kart Wii (both games you probably consider casual). What about another big title, say GTA4? You probably think its a hardcore game, but again, there's a campaign, and a multiplayer, you can play it alot, or you can play it a little.

Honestly, I don't see why people have come up with this hardcore/casual arguement. You may consider yourself a "hardcore gamer" all it means is you play a little more, nothing else, you still play the same games.

To the OP-
I do enjoy big budget well refined, big budget, and innovative games that have a lot of depth and length to it. Though I have a Wii, I play games far more on my PC and am considering buying a HD console this summer. Obviously, I hang around VGChartz a lot. And yet, I consider myself a casual gamer.

Seriously, your post is full of ignorant misconceptions. The Wii has done nothing to harm gaming. In fact, if it weren't for the Wii, I wouldn't be here lambasting your thread of fail. You think that people would buy PS3s and Xbox360s instead if the Wii didn't existed when all MS and Sony have done is target the small "hard core" crowd that likes a very limited amount of genres which don't appeal to the masses. This causes a budget increase as developers attempt to make their game stand out from the crowd which forces smaller developers to go somewhere else as they can't compete with the big boys. If the so called "hard core" gaming is "dying", which is absolute bullshit, then it has no one to blame on but itself. To use the Wii as a scapegoat merely because it's successful is utterly ridiculous.

You’re so wrong that it’s gone from being not funny to being absolutely hilarious. To begin with, no one on these forums should be a “hardcore” gamer. There is no such thing as a “hardcore” or a “casual” gamer, despite the junk that the enthusiast press may be trying to shove down our throats for the past few years. I’ve already written a lengthy and rather dull essay on this site about the matter, so rather than bore you all again I’ll restrain myself to pointing out that all of us here play and enjoy some “casual” games, and that “casual gamers” are always the primary consumers of every “hardcore” game that goes platinum.

And yes, I read your later explanation about what separates a “casual” game from a hardcore one, and I have to say I’m less than impressed: if “depth” is what divides the two, then almost no first person shooter out there qualifies as a “hardcore” game, while every Sim game made headed by Will Wright is the ultimate “hardcore” game. If “depth” is what determines which games are magically good enough for us and which ones aren’t, then all of the Grand Theft Autos are more “casual” than a retired maid playing Wii Sports. If “depth” is the arbiter of what’s worth “our” time as “hardcore gamers”, the only games any of us should be playing are the Europa Universalis series. Sorry dude, but your logic makes zero sense.

But let us assume, for the sake of discussion, that you are somehow right about there being such a divide. Your argument, then, is that the Wii is somehow going to make all developers devote so much of their time and resources to “casual” games that we “hardcore” gamers, who are far too good for such casual crap as Tetris and would never in our life be caught playing Guitar Hero, will somehow be left out in the lurch. That’s patently absurd. In case you haven’t noticed, even Nintendo, who’s spearheading this “casual” movement that you fear so much, is still primarily making more traditional games. Here, have a look at their Wii releases.

http://vgchartz.com/games/index.php?name=&console=Wii&developer=&publisher=245&genre=&keyword=&order=Sales

Seems to me that the vast majority of Nintendo’s titles are not “casual”, unless of course Mario, Metroid, Zelda, and the like have morphed overnight into being “casual” games. It’s possible, of course. I mean, the current king of “hardcore” games, GTA, was called a casual title only a few years ago, so since that idiotic title is so amorphous that a game could go from being at the bottom of the “hardcore” list to the top, I suppose another game can go from the top to the bottom quicker than a drunken prom date. But since I refuse to believe that that’s happened, I have to ask what exactly it is that makes you think that all publishers are going to suddenly devote so much of their resources to “casual” games that the hardcore snobs will have nothing left to play.

But Nintendo is only one publisher, so perhaps you’re afraid that it’s an exception rather than the rule? Unfortunately, you’re wrong there too. You’ll notice, for instance, that the stream of traditional titles has hardly abated since the Wii was introduced. The PS3 and the 360, your bastion of “hardcore-ness”, are still getting plenty of games narrowly tailored to the 16-25 male demographic. What’s more, so is the Wii, unless it’s somehow escaped your attention that almost all the major cross-platform releases coming out this year also have a Wii version. Call of Duty 5, Guitar Hero IV, Sonic Unleashed, the list goes on and on. As an added bonus, we’re also seeing exclusive Wii games that you would consider “hardcore” coming out soon. Or have you not noticed the announcements of such games as The Conduit, or Mad World, or the newest version of Castlevania? Actually, I’m sure you haven’t noticed that, otherwise you wouldn’t have made such a ludicrous claim to begin with.

Finally, the part of your post that made me laugh the most. “(Y)our preferred form of entertainment will go down the shitter as it becomes less and less profitable to make hardcore games.” I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it’s already less and less profitable to make hardcore games on the 360 and PS3, and that’s without the Wii somehow sapping their sales away. Haven’t you noticed yet that publishers and developers who are working on those two platforms are reporting record revenue, but lower profits than last generation? Heck, EA actually posted a loss for its last fiscal quarter, and it’s blaming much of that on the development of its big-budget HD games. It’s simple logic, really. We know for a fact that developing games for the 360 and PS3 cost two, three, sometimes even more on average than games for the Wii and PS2.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=18389

And yet publishers are only charging one-fifth more for their games this generation than the last. How, pray tell, do you expect developers and publishers to continue to be profitable on your systems when it costs them a lot more to develop for them, while having only a pittance more in compensation? If anything, a few big-budget bombs on those systems can cause even a fairly large publisher to start cutting staff, while big-budget games for the 360 and PS3 are putting even the big-name publishers in some financial difficulty. Recall, for instance, the fact that a Konami executive essentially went on record as saying that Metal Gear Solid 4 basically has to sell millions of copies to make a return on its investment, unless you can figure out some other way to interpret Konami's need to have the game sell a million copies on day one.

http://www.joystiq.com/2007/11/29/metal-gear-solid-4-producer-says-game-needs-to-sell-a-million-co/

And it's not just the big boys who are feeling the heat here. Hell, smaller developers who’ve been losing money on those two platforms have been making a killing on the Wii precisely because their developments costs are lower for that system than they are for the 360 and PS3. Indeed, some new developers are choosing to make games for the Wii for precisely that reason.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=18247

So can you please explain to me why the Wii is supposed to be the death knell of hardcore gaming, when from all the data we have it appears that it’s the development costs of the HD consoles that are causing profits to drop, studios to merge, and developers to close down? I’d go into more details about why you’re wrong, except I not only think that not only is this post long enough already, but I seriously suspect that I’ve put far more thought into your post than you did.

Edit: Apologies everyone. I didn't realize how big of a rant that was... 

Let's light up some candles for the HD consoles and lets have a moment of silence please...

I don’t wish to see any system fail or any gamer loose access to the type of games they prefer. But whatever market share Nintendo has gotten they earned honestly by creating a fresh new innovative and exciting system with great accessibility and a moderate price. It took needless control complexity out and put the fun back in. 

Conversely, whatever market share MS and Sony have lost (and they aren’t doing all that badly), they gave away by overpricing, placing technology over fun, and allowing the games to become more and more inaccessible through overly complex completely non-intuitive controls. Somehow the game part of games was being swallowed up by the mechanics and technology of gaming. The results were mighty pretty but not a lot of fun to play. The games demanded too much of a learning curve that not everyone had time for. Why is the Wii thought of as a great party console? Because anyone can pick up a controller and in minutes be into the game. With a PS3 or Xbox 360 game they would be lucky to get through the tutorial before the party was over, if they could play it at all and many couldn’t. 

That’s a steep price in terms of time commitment just to play a game and even after you did you found yourself playing the same old FPS with prettier graphics but the same tired old concepts. Last night I found myself in a debate with some “hardcore” types who were convinced that Left 4 Dead was revolutionary and exciting because of the way in had improved the co-op mode. That’s not revolutionary, that’s refinement, revolutionary was Wii Sports when you found you could play just by doing what came naturally. No frustration, no tutorial just fun. You can claim MK is just the same old game in a new version and in part that’s true but driving with the wheel is a fresh new experience and a hell of a lot of fun. Boom Blox has more originality than almost any HD game I’ve seen. 

Fresh, new innovation and fun were the things I had found harder and harder to find in gaming and why I gave away my PS2 and quit buying computer games. I’d been there and done that going back to Pong and I was giving up gaming. That is I had given up until I played Wii Sports at a friend’s house and realized I was having more fun in an hour than in the last decade of console gaming. Now I have all of the good games, all the gadgets and I play more, and enjoy it more than anything since those days when all games were intuitive and designed for fun. 

Without the Wii, I would not have bought ANY system this generation so the Wii didn’t take me away from Sony or Microsoft. The Wii brought me back into gaming. In fact, I doubt that Sony and MS would be doing significantly better without the Wii. They would  rule supreme over a pastime that would be slowly dying as more people left and fewer joined. I hear a lot of “the Wii killed gaming” bunk. I think more likely, the Wii saved gaming.   

No, I think the HD consoles are just fine and I don't "wish or hope" that they fail. I'm one of the one's who's just never liked the price points nor the ever changing console config. I like consoles to offer the same feature set no matter when I purchased it. I think that's not too much to ask for.

I in no way want to see the HD consoles fail. Any enjoyment I expressed since yesterday was just seeing the backlash from the anti-wii propaganda earlier. That said I apologize if anything I wrote upset anybody. However, I want to ask other gamers who refuse to support the Wii, Do you want the Wii to fail and for those of you who have already expressed so and you clearly know who you are, why?

I grow tired of these childish rants about how the Wii is killing gaming. There may have been a few bans I didn't agree with before but there was one yesterday I specifically enjoyed seeing after a certain poster stated how the next generation will be so greatly influenced by the Wii that console gaming is now dead and PC gaming will have to be the last resort of hardcore gamers.

I consider myself a hardcore gamer. I've owned a console every generation since the SNES and before that even had an Atari 2600. When I was younger due to financial reasons I was unable to purchase every console and play all the games I desired to. This generation I intend to remedy that with an HD console purchase in the upcoming few weeks. Yet I am not doing so out of any desire from a perceived lack of quality gaming on the Nintendo Wii. I realize many people won't understand but to me the Wii has revitalized my passion for gaming. It may not have "saved gaming" per se but it definitely has no part in killing traditional gaming as so many would lead you to believe.

We could argue about the quality of new and innovative controls versus the improvement of graphical and other technological improvements under the hood of the "superior" consoles all day but in the end it has to come down to one thing. GAMES. We are gamers and we play games. I understand many of you may not like the games offered on the Nintendo Wii and that is perfectly acceptable. You are free to your opinions same as I am. And to me the Wii library is not only adequate it is quite amazing and I have spent countless hours with it.

This fear or paranoia that future generations will be inferior due to a increased focus on casual gaming needs to stop. One thing many forget is how many of us became gamers due to casual gaming. GTA has long been considered a casual game. Mario, Tetris, and Pong have influenced millions and they are classic staples of "casual gaming". Even if the Wii's mainstream success causes developers to focus more efforts on "casual gaming" traditional console gaming will never die out. Titles like SMG, Loz:TP, GHIII, RE4, and more are just a few titles enjoying success on the Wii that could easily fit in well with HD console demographics. And just like any other entertainment industry with the influx of mainstream customers, certain developers will still continue to cater to the hardcore. Just because cash hungry studios looking for a quick buck put out titles like "Epic Movie" and "Meet the Spartans" doesn't mean quality titles like "No Country for Old Men" or "There Will Be Blood" are forgotten.

I think there's a very simple compromise that would work out very well. People who don't agree with the Wii philosophy at least accept and realize it is a valid form of gaming and not harmful to the industry. You can't mock and belittle the vast majority of gamers and then sit back and not expect a backlash.

On the other hand I will gladly admit Wii fanboys go overboard quite a bit and need to learn how to be more modest. The Wii success should not be cause for celebration at the expense of the PS3 and 360. As gamers we all benefit from more competition and I truly hope May NPD sees better numbers for all consoles as they "adjust" sales to make up for previous errors.