It's brilliant just from a marketing standpoint. Come the holidays, as hundreds of local news channels are doing their annual "What's hot for Xmas!" segments, what do you think they'll want to show viewers? Some guy getting pwned on Killzone (or Halo or Mario), or one of their own anchors looking like an idiot on a WiiBoard? It'll generate laughs, build good will, get free advertsing, and then, of course, pull in the babes with the promise of weight loss.

There will ALWAYS be a portion of the market that is casual. And it will ALWAYS be the biggest portion of the market in terms of dollars. Yes, we hardcore gamers (I assume anyone hanging out in the vgchartz forums qualifies) buy a lot more games than the casuals do, but there aren't enough of us to outweigh them. Think of your friends who own consoles but aren't immersed in gamer culture -- do they have dozens of quality games, or do they have Madden, Karaoke Revolution, an Atari collection, a Mario game and/or a handful of random greatest hits titles? These aren't people who bought into a fad and then gave up; they're just people who aren't going to spend more on gaming than they do on eating out or playing golf every month. They will buy and play games now and then when something catches their attention.

And I don't think there's a hard line between hardcore and casual games. Yes, I consider myself hardcore -- I like to play games all the way through, I eschew strategy guides and cheat codes (unless I really get stuck), I have a bunch of working consoles from various generations, and I keep close tabs on the market. I just finished Scarface on the Wii and am several hours into Resident Evil 4. But that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy Wario Ware, and I'll be picking up Boogie and MySims. (I will not, however, be picking up Mario Party 8, as it's a BAD casual game from everything I've read online. Clearly a lot of people don't research, or just don't care and are having fun regardless. I'm actually a little bit envious of that at times!)

What is hard to remember is that a good casual game CAN appeal to the hardcore, picky as we are; the reverse is not always true.

Yes. The gamers in the 2600 days were called "kids" (or, more precisely, boys). There were relatively few whoo didn't play games. For adults, the opposite was true. So the divide was age based.

As the kids got (and continue to get) older, some game up gaming due to work, family and other unimpotant things. Some kept their priorities straight, reslulting in the divide of gamer and non-gamer.

As others have mentioned the problem with the PS3 and Xbox 360 is that they're too expensive for casual gamers. Even if they did have the games it would likely still be a hard sell until they come down to a mass market price (likely $199 or maybe $249 with a pack-in game like Nintendo did). The only problem is that neither one has so far come up with a casual game that has the buzz of Wii Sports and Wii Fit. It's going to take an amazing amount of creativity for them to challenge Nintendo after coming from this far behind.

What I would do if I were them... Devote resources to making games that appeal to young children (even though Nintendo truly dominates in that area) like Banjo Kazooie 3, but also extremely creative stuff like perhaps interactive lego kits or a wand plug-in controller for a big budget Harry Potter game, educational sesame street/elmo games (I know my ideas aren't exactly great but I'm sure a lot of creative people getting paid a lof of money would come up with stuff) and keep working on driving down the price of their systems.

I understand what you're saying, there were "gamers",  but did companies know who these people were? Did they know their gender, age, race, income level, education, etc? Did they know what games they would like?

They didn't know who to market to, they just threw their product out there and hoped for the best.

hahahah the wii hate continues.

first off to answer th3 "where's the third party support?!?!?!?" question.
it wasn't until within the past couple months that we've seen 3rd parties (konami, capcom, square enix) really come out and say they are shifting their focus to the wii. games take time to develop. and i doubt that any of these multi-million dollar companies want to come out and show some half assed product.

also you can argue that many of the games that were shown that we know about are multi-plat. but i'll argue JUST BECAUSE they are on the wii makes them different in their own right. any game that incorporates the motion control is going to be a vastly different experience then one on the 360/ps3 (madden anyone?). so it's up to the user to determine how much of a benefit or hinderence that is.

as far as wiifit and the whole gimmick argument goes? hey it's up to developers (nintenod and 3rd parties) to *GASP* USE THEIR IMAGINATION. something like that could work out very well in terms of game immersion. the excercise thing is just an ADDED feature.

if developers actually spend the time to use the perriphals there is a lot of possibilites that could make that fun, new and exciting. do i think this will happen? time will tell. is it going to make or break my decision to support the wii in the future. not likely.

as for ckmlb and the fps comments. come on dude i haven't seen a ton of innovation in those games. maybe if you're comparing the first doom to fps now yes. but it's very slim insignificant changes at best.

i mean (NOT YOU) how can people knock on mario, metroid, zelda games as the same old same take on the same variation. but not fps'? final fantasys? god of wars? gran turisom? tekken? and so on and so on.

bottom line everyone likes what they like and should just play what they want to play.

my 2cents

Probably not. Back then everything was so new and the industry so small that no one really had any idea what the hell they were creating. :D

I agree, the reason the Wii is selling better than the PS2 was isn't just the "new" casual gamers though as some seem to think.  They are attracting the old casuals too, as they are the only system in their price range.  Once a 360 or PS3 manages to get below $300, then maybe they will start getting chunks of the casual.  Right now though the 2 systems are dominated primarily by the "hardcore" 13-25 year old males.  If they want to expand their market they are going to need to adjust their price more than anything.  Adults won't pay $400+ to play games very often.   That's why the Wii gets the casual adult market as well.  

As for what the Wii needs to do, they need to keep their library very diverse.  Rather than focus on one area of gaming, they need to show games for ALL areas for the entirity of the Wii's life.  Although it wasn't as interesting for hardcore gamers like us as say Sony's conference, Nintendo did a masterful job of this at E3.  They spent an hour plugging their hardcore 3rd party games and already announced games, then they anounced Mario Kart Wii and it's online play for the hardcore.  After that (and mainly for the mainstream press like MSNBC, CNN, etc.) they announced Wii Fit.  This is what they need to continue to do for the Wii to garuntee it's success. 

Alright, I'm going to copy and paste this post I made in the Mario Kart thread

	Mario Kart: Double Dash	Nintendo	0.89	3.85	1.86	6.60
	Super Smash Bros Melee	Nintendo	1.44	4.06	1.08	6.58
	Super Mario Sunshine	Nintendo	0.87	3.73	1.31	5.91
	The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker	Nintendo	0.89	2.44	1.05	4.38
	Luigi Mansion	Nintendo	0.46	2.21	0.72	3.39
	Metroid Prime	Nintendo	0.12	1.92	0.73	2.77
	Pokemon Collosseum	Nintendo	0.71	1.17	0.62	2.50
	Animal Crossing	Nintendo	0.66	1.68	0.15	2.49
	Mario Party 4	Nintendo	0.92	1.13	0.39	2.44
	Mario Party 5	Nintendo	0.73	0.96	0.36	2.05
	Paper Mario 2	Nintendo	0.46	1.23	0.26	1.95
	Starfox Adventures	Nintendo	0.32	0.95	0.58	1.85
	Pikmin	Nintendo	0.56	0.78	0.27	1.61
	Mario Party 6	Nintendo	0.60	0.85	0.11	1.56
	Kirbys Air Ride	Nintendo	0.45	0.96	0.12	1.53
	Mario Party 7	Nintendo	0.47	0.87	0.11	1.45
	Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour	Nintendo	0.25	1.03	0.15	1.43
	Metroid Prime 2: Echoes	Nintendo	0.07	0.80	0.37	1.24
	The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess	Nintendo	0.04	0.85	0.28	1.17
	Pokemon XD	Nintendo	0.35	0.58	0.21	1.14
	Mario Power Tennis	Nintendo	0.46	0.52	0.15	1.13
	Super Mario Strikers	Nintendo	0.21	0.43	0.42	1.06
	Donkey Konga	Nintendo	0.46	0.43	0.17	1.06
	Pikmin 2

Now it looks like within 2 years Nintendo will have given the Wii what it gave the Gamecube during its entire run. So far all we haven't heard anouncements for new Pikman, Starfox, Luigi's Mansion, Mario Tennis, Mario Golf or Kirby games.

So the Wii is outdoing the Gamecube in terms of traditional major games... The fact that they're reaching out to new gamers as well is a good thing, not a bad thing.