I don't understand where this talk about Nintendo abandoning its core fans comes from.  Yes the focus of the last E3 was Wii Fit and before that the focus was on Wii Sports.  But in 1.5 years on the market we have had Zelda TP (I know it was developed for Gamecube but was still a wonderful launch game), Super Mario Galaxy, Mario Kart, Smash Brawl.  At this point in Gamecube's life I think only Melee had come out (and maybe Sunshine was out or just about due).  So we are getting hardcore games now faster than ever before.  Unless no hardcore game comes out for the next few years it can't be said the core fans are being abandoned.  But we know Kid Icarus is coming out, there is bound to be a new Zelda in the next few years, there is going to be Punch Out, Pikmin, F Zero, Disaster Day of Crisis, etc.

this is not a surpise!!

talk about stating the obvious, how stupid can you get, now i know why alot of people hate n00bs at first

I don't understand why mods don't just permaban people who start off like this immediately.

Well, for starters, Mario Kart isn't really a hardcore game. And besides that, a hardcore game is so very difficult to describe. I suppose that you could say Nintendo is giving their loyal consumers what they want, and that might make more sense. But Brawl, Super Mario Galaxy, etc., could be played by anyone from 5 to 55 years old, and thus they could easily be viewed as casual. Again, it's a pretty big issue so it's pointless to explore.

What Zenfoldor said is that if it were up to Nintendo's loyal fans, Nintendo would be unsuccessful because they wouldn't have changed their strategy and would have just put forward exactly what their fans would have wanted (Mother 4, for example).

Oh, and you forget Metroid Prime 3 (I actually consider Metroid a pretty hardcore series, especially the 2D iterations).

Oh yea at that notion "Nintendo abandoned it's core gamers" people seem to forget that the Wii is fully backwards compatible - I'm pretty sure the new audience don't fall into the game cube core.

If anything Xbox360 initially abandanded it's core users, and the Game Cube abandoned the N64 guys... but that's not really the case as the N64 was cartige a based console vs the Game Cube being a mini-dvd based console, while everything else featuring backwards compatibility has been diode format for a while.

The reason why Wii appeals so much is its peripherals. look at the top selling Wii games. Wii Play, Wii Sports, Wii Fit etc. They all have peripherals.

Soriku: Yeah, Trial Galaxies were killer. I actually got 99 lives trying to do the Blooper galaxy. The Bubble galaxy was mildly hard, and the Ball Rolling galaxy was not hard in the slightest. Still very hardcore though.

Dib8rman: How did the Xbox 360 abandon the userbase (or core users)? Hell, it did a great job of capturing the Xbox userbase. A strong launch period with Dead or Alive, Elder Scrolls, and several high profile shooter games.

I don't know if Nintendo will continue to be "number 1" in the future but what I'm ready to beat is that they will be always one of the most profitable company in the industry and the least likely to exit from the VG market.

Eh.. no wii sports and wii play do not have peripherals they have the standard controllers