Ok I posted this in another thread but I wanted to discuss it in it's own thread:

Something about this entire casual gamer crazy has been bothering me and I could never figure out what it was and it's finally come to me, history might be actually repeating itself. When I was very young my parents bought an Atari 2600 and my entire family played it because it was a new experience. Eventually though my mother and stepfather grew bored of the system and that was the end of their gaming for awhile, my siblings and I though continued to get new games and use it.

Then years later my mom picked up a NES with the light gun and duck hunt / super mario brothers and my mom and stepfather were fascinated with the light gun and with duck hunt / super mario brothers and we'd all play it and have competitions. They eventually got bored of it, stopped gaming, and it was my siblings and I left yet again with the system and buying games for it.

Now it's the time of the Wii with it's motion sensing Wiimote that is fascinating the non-gaming moms, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers, etc (and likely mine this Christmas when they get one) and the WiiBoard that is doing the same with a subset of those non-gamers. Now I have to ask, what is going to keep their attention (say my mother and stepfather) for the long haul this time around when the Atari 2600 and NES with light gun and duck hunt/ super mario brothers failed?  I can't help but think eventually when the novelty of these things wear off they'll become bored yet again and they'll abandoned it just like the previous two times. Only this time it might be a lot worse because many videogame companies changing over to get in on the attention and noise being generated by the casual gamers will be left holding the bag with casual games and the audience for them gone.

Anyways sorry for the long post but that's just what I think is going to happen. Please understand that I'm not trying to bash the Wii or anything, if I was it would mean I was bashing the NES which was one of my favorite systems ever, I'm just voicing what I think is going to happen.  That casual gamers will eventually abandon us yet again.

No this time, the console is actually focusing on non gamers and trying to get them to buy stuff. E3 showed that Nintendo's focus is not for traditional gamers anymore. There was one announcement of a traditional game and the whole rest of the conference was about the casuals and the success with that.

Also where is the 3rd party support? I thought there was going to be a flood of 3rd parties supporting the Wii now that it's selling the most. Yet every third party thing that I've heard so far I already knew and a lot of them are either smaller games or casual games as well.

You have valid points and history may very well repeat itself.

But I doubt it. As ckmlb stated, Nintendo is actually making a push toward casual gamers this time around. Previous to this, casual gamers were simply interested in something novel and once that initial "wow" wore off, they moved on. There was nothing new to keep them interested.

Do I expect this Wii insanity to slow down? Oh, absolutely. Many of those casual gamers who were fighting to get a Wii over the past year will realize that they don't really like gaming and move on. But many of them will stay because Nintendo is actually attempting to court them this time around.

And people picked up a PS2 for Guitar Hero got bored and their system sits unused ...

As a rough estimate 10% of gamers (approximately 20 Million users currently) represent the hard-core gamer market who has very few long term (longer than 2 months) interuptions in their game play habits; the other 90% play games on occasion and will pick up games as they become interested in them.

 No, most of the games they showed were "hardcore". Not only from them, but from 3rd party as well.

 And the Wii has the biggest list of 3rd party exclusives so far -with the great majority being "hardcore" games. 

I don't think your trying to bash the Wii at all Legend. 

Actually come to think of it the new casual games vs. hardcore games reminds me a lot of when reality tv vs. episodic television.  Some people who were used to episodic television (like Law & Order, Seinfeld, etc) hated reality tv or felt threatened by it, but studios loved them though because they were cheap and easier to produce. Some people thought they were going to be just a fad and others thought they might hurt episodic television a lot yet today it's been shown to be anything but a fad and that both episodic tv and reality tv can co-exist with both having their hits.

Most of them being mediocre games and licensed stuff. Don't even start telling me the Wii is getting better 3rd party games than the 360 or the PS3.

Also I can see WiiFit selling, but does it really bring anything new to people? It's not like Wii Sports where you are simulating playing actual sports in motion which was totally original and unheard of before. Do you really need the Wii to exercise on a mat? not really....

I don't think it will be as successful as the Wii Sports phenomenon and I think they should have gone with separate Wii Sports version that go deeper into each sport and focused on that. As in Wii Baseball as a full game, Wii Tennis as a full depper game.

WiiFit is only an excuse for people to exercise, it doesn't make the Wii any funner. Wii Sports does that.

I mentioned this in the other thread as well. What about the glut in FPS games? It seems like there are more and more FPS shooters with bigger and bigger budgets. At some point there has to be saturation if not even a bubble. At one point in the Sony show there were five straight FPS demos in a row.

How many big budget FPS shooters can the industry make? If the base remains stagnant, can the escalation continue?

Legend11, you bring up a good point and I for one appreciate your concern, but I think this time is different. Casual gamers have always been an after-thought. Well, actually, in Atari2600 days, and even to a degree NES days, there was no 'gamer' and 'casual gamer' groups, just people buying a game system.
This time though Nintendo is specifically targetting the non/lasped/casual gamer, while trying to maintain the core gamers too. Plus they have the advantage of having already tried and succeeded with this approach with the DS, having learn from those mistakes, and can now apply those lessons learned to the Wii. As long as Nintendo (and 3rd partys) keep coming out with games that casuals enjoy, casuals will continue to buy.
Where I fear you may be right is with the 360 specifically, and PS3 to a lessor extent, where they may attempt to snag some 'casuals' for themselves with Rock Star/Guitar Hero/Home/Scene It? (surpresses laugh... fails... Scene It? Is that the best they have??) but I doubt they can maintain those casual's interest as their systems from the ground up are really intented for hardcore gamers.