Or "why Nintendo is curb stomping the competition"

I found a really fascinating article buy a guy named Sean Malstom, please read it and give your thoughts.

"Birdmen and the Casual Fallacy" http://malstrom.50webs.com/birdman.html

"The real reason why so many in the Industry have rallied about casual gaming since the domination of the Wii is to escape blame for piss poor decision making. They talk of casual gaming like it was a ‘new trend’ despite it always existing and its increase on PCs were generating newspaper articles half a decade ago. By describing ‘casual gaming’ as an unforeseen explosion, they save their necks from investors who would have rightly penalized them for making bad business decisions. Pre-Wii, Nintendo talked about appealing to non-gamers and former gamers. Casual gamers are neither of those two."

If you can't be bothered to read for 30 minutes, do this thread a favor and don't post. Chances are if you come in talking about "hardcore" and "casual" arguments you'll just be exposed for exactly the kind of thinking the article is talking about rather than convince anyone of anything other than your ignorance.

Anyway, my personal thoughts:

I found this article really eye-opening. It's changed my perception of how I personally approach thinking about games. Truth be told I never touched Wii Sports for more than 30 minutes at a time (I R LEET HEER ME CALL U A FAGORT) once a month or so until I really started digging into the game with the medals and what not.

All in all a lot of this stuff has bubbled around in my head, like when I got REALLY into Wii Sports or listened to Nintendo quotes talking about non-gamers and lapsed gamers, but this article does a brilliant job of connecting all these things and explaining the larger implications.

The whole "casual" gaming thing never really stuck with me anyway, as my wife and some family members would do Wii Sports for hours and hours, or Mario Party 8 for hours and hours and hours and hours.  Sure they didn't want to load up Armed Assault for some hardcore military sim action, but they sure as hell put in the hours when the right conditions came along--not casual gaming in the least.

Anyway, I'm not afraid to admit my perception was off in a lot of respects prior to reading this article. Like many Nintendo surprised me, but it's because their thinking was 100 steps ahead of us, including the higher ups in the industry. Perhaps all of us here, as more serious gamers, can learn something by looking downstream instead of concentrating on the upstream.

I'd love to read your thoughts, enjoy the article.

Hmm, this article in this forum or the NIntendo one? If it's this forum I'll go ahead and close the thread.

Can Wii Music be called a "casual" game at least? I don't believe there's any other way to play it except casually.

Can that even be called a game?

I read it beofre, I'm not going to reread it. Casual term isn't a mistake, just becuase they have been around before doesn't make the term wrong. Hardcore is a mistake; there were hardcore gamers in the Snes days, its not like the appeared this gen, its just that now Hardcore is considered to mean the teenage FPS crowd.

Nintendo is destroying the competion because Nintendo disrupted the market by going after casuals first, and by focusing on casuals. Typically, consoles go after the hardcore, build a base, lower prices, and then appeal to the casuals (this is clearly the strategy Microsft is employing for the 360) This would seem bad for the hardcore gamer becuase it makes them less important, but in reality they are just as important, and their long term viability is increased due to market expenison. A healthy market makes for happy gamers.

Nicely put.

I'm not sure how I'd classify it. I haven't played it. Wii Sports had an insane amount of depth if you poked hard enough at it. Sure it's simple and cute on the surface but there's a lot to it if played it enough. I would define Wii Sports as an "intro" game.

My guess is that Wii Music is the same. I wouldn't expect some huge 1 million first week sales, but like Nintendogs it'll still be alive when the dust settles. That's my theory, but only time will tell.

Give it a read, he explains the whole problem of thinking in terms of "casual" instead of thinking about these types of games as introduction/ 1st tier games.

Well I'm judging this based on what came out of Miyamoto's own mouth, it's his game, and I can swear we all take his word as gospel around here. Until I hear differently from a hands-on from some publication, I'm going to assume there is no hidden depth to this game. He was very blunt in his wording.

@cAPSLOCK-I've read the Malstrom article. It's hundreds of years old in internet time. To Wii defenders it's the equivalent of the Holy Bible. You should ask us if we've read the Bible. You may get fewer "yes" answers.

Casual always struck me as games that can be easily picked up and played without much depth beyond the initial experience. I guess that's why the term I think doesn't apply to a lot of these games as anyone who pokes hard enough in Wii Sports will find a lot more depth than originally thought.

A lower end player might not ever find all the tricks, but it's no fault of the game itself. The thing is (as Nintendo noticed with the DS) is that a lot of these people are putting time into these games and moving "upstream" to the more complex games.

It usually starts with the first complex thing you find in a simpler game. That first topspin in Wii Tennis that encourages you to fiddle with the mechanics and suddenly that player is less "casual" than they were.  Sort of like finding your first secret block in Super Mario Brothers.

I thought the term "gateway drug" was a lot more fitting.

Possibly, but first I'll have to ask what the definition of "casual" is. I've never gotten the same answer from any three people, or from the same person three years later, which is reason #2398 I think trying to create a distinction is meaningless and silly. I'll agree with the thread title though: make your game a quality one, but don't bother trying to target the "casual" and "hardcore" demographics, as that's like trying to grasp fog.