So... the Wii is not imaginary and has real customers, and hardcore gamers are trying to portray the Wii's influence on gaming as non existent. How VERY insightful. I am glad to say that Sean also carried on his penchant for getting to the point and skipping frivolous analogies.

What Hardcore Is - by malstrom in "Washing the Hardcore away"

But if one scrutinizes social phenomena in detail and the attitudes of gamers as they have been modified by generations, one soon sees how gamers have come to confuse obstacles with sophistication and obstacles with cause.

‘Hardcore’ is, today, said to be those who enjoy epic, long games encased in a digital graphical and musical orchestrations of delight. But this was not who ‘hardcore’ gamers were fifteen years ago who enjoyed shorter, harder, arcade style gaming while the new gamers enjoyed easier, story based, epics. And this was not the case twenty two years ago when gamers preferred the keyboard input and massive scope of computer games over the harder, shorter burst style of the new consoles coming out. It would appear that the definition of ‘hardcore’ changes with the times.

But there is a definition of hardcore that is universal: gamers who prefer the obstacles to remain. This definition would include current ‘hardcore’ gamers as well as Space War! fans distressed at seeing the game escape the universities.

Malstrom you fail to understand what the true meaning of "hardcore" is. The definition "hardcore" is applied to many fields of recreation including sports, television watching, movie watching, gaming. It denotes a devotion to a particular endeaver above and beyond a typical person in intensity and time/money outlay. If a driver is a normal person, someone who races his car every 2nd week at the local track is hardcore.

Your failure to properly identify what a "hardcore" gamer is leads your thinking astray. People are identified as hardcore by how they do things, not by what they do. This is the reason why your ideas about which games your version of the hardcore are irrelevant.

I agree with Squilliam. Mental Ilness would also make sense- why does he put so much time and energy into these long speeches when his opinion has minimal effect even amongst gamers?

Why is it that the ones least targeted by an offering complain the most, I wonder? Maybe because they're used to being in the spotlight? Maybe because they don't think anybody else will read it but people like them? It is a mystery.

Squilliam said: Thanks! Btw, just a quickie because I want to exit this thread asap for now. In the period of that data the console market Wii/Xb/PS increased from 18 million consoles to 55 million consoles. So the payoff for that increase won't show up on the companies books until next financial year. You're comparing a fledgling Console market to a mature handheld market which is unfair IMO. The HD market increased by 19 million from 12 million between the PS3/360 to 30 million and the Wii increased by about 24 million so the market size just wasn't there to adequately reward the developers who worked on the consoles. Xbox 360 numbers 4th April 2008 1,341,223 (-14%) 112,064,936 6.29 Xbox 360 numbers 6th April 2008 653,810 (+63%) 35,999,913 3.84 So its just too early to call the HD consoles failures in regards to developer profitability even with the more expensive model of development.

You make some fair points. I'll admit that this year's results will be more indicative of future results than last year's was, simply because of the larger base. But this time I believe you're drawing too narrow a conclusion from the facts. I no longer have the relevant figures before me, but I do recall that the transition into last generation did not see so dramatic a fall in terms of profits.

True, the numbers dropped all around, but even in the first year of the PS2/Gamecube/X-Box era EA alone made more in profits than the nineteen publishers on the list (if you exclude Nintendo, who would just throw everything off). And EA was far from being the only company that was making heavy profits. Things weren't as rosy that first year as they had been at the height of the PlayStation era, but there was still plenty of money to be made. So this transition has been bringing in hitherto unseen pain for publishers, and as the chart shows things have a long ways to go before they get better.

But there are other indicators as well. If this site's figures are correct, the 360 is rapidly closing in on the lifetime sales of its predecessor, and yet company's still can't reliably milk a profit off of it. The PS3 is around where the Gamecube was at this point in its lifetime, but so far the platform has proven to be a black hole for most companies. This is why third parties are all but required to go multi-platform now, since neither one alone can justify the development expenses. That's a far, far cry from the situation of any other generation.

Finally, we already do have some figures for this year, as a full fiscal quarter has passed since then, and on a year-to-year basis the profits have not generally been going up for companies that focus on the HD platforms. There have been exceptions, yes, but the majority of companies did not fare quite so well, as the number of closures and mergers show. As an anecdotal aside, it's a sign of the times when Take-2 was nearly taken over by another company, and when even stalwarts like Bioware agree to be purchased just so that they can have the necessary revenue source to stay in business.

Again, I admit that things might suddenly go 180, and that profits might start raining in for the average HD developer (even if it'll be too late for dozens of companies). But the current signs don't really point that way. This saddens and angers me, but when I'm faced with the numbers I'm currently looking at, hope does not shine bright. I've got my fingers crossed that things will improve, but for now...

Tell you what, let's make an agreement. If, in one year's time, most developers are reliably profiting from HD gaming, and the tide of development has not significantly shifted to the Wii and DS because of developers' not being able to play in the HD pool, we'll both agree that Malstrom was wrong on this point, which in turn means that a part of his overall thesis was flawed. Until then, we'll both wait and see what cards the industry deals us. This doesn't mean the discussion is over: as others have been pointing out, Malstrom's analysis has quite a bit more to it, so we can continue to discuss disruption et. al. But for now, it seems we've reached a stalemate, since we're both drawing radically different conclusions from the same peices of data.

Yeah, that's pretty much it. Remember also that Disney's milking movie tie-ins and those High School Musical things for all they're worth. Which, it turns out, is quite a lot...

You mean Wii gamers on this forum? Since the gamers on this forum are hardcore, they are less representative of the tastes of the overall Wii population than the Xbox 360 or PS3 owners here.

Mm. He probably does it for the same reason I make long-ass posts: he likes the sound of the keyboard tacking. Mind you, his are worth reading. Besides, you can say the same thing for all of us here in the forums, or for most editorialists who have ever lived: why bother? The answer is actually pretty straightforward. You want to share your thoughts on a subject, and you keep writing because people (such as myself) are actually listening.

I'm not sure if you've read all of his stuff, but if you ever have a few hours to spare I recommend that you do, especially the articles proper (beginning with the ones from The Wiikly in 2006). There's a lot of stuff to digest there, most of which made only marginal sense at first but which became increasingly likely to be correct as time marched on. Someone in this thread said that he's over-rated because he made a lucky prediction; actually he's given his reasons long before he was proven correct, and he's been right on several occassions, which unless he's unbelievably lucky tells me that he's got a grasp on the situation.

XBLA arecade is starting to make use of this. Alot of DLC was sold for Elder Scrolls Oblivivon, and I think Fable 2: Pub games helps lionhead studios bottom line.

I agree that the school system is broken (at least in America) schools fail to teach study habits, learning processes, curiosity as you said, and most importantly social skills. SS accounts for 40-80% of a person's sucess depending on a person's profession, and yet there is a failure to teach these skills in school. It is possible to practice ande research all the above skills, but it is a big pain.