The "Nintendo doesn't care about hardcore" stigma is not that different from "Sony only cares about flashy movies, not gameplay" stigma that appeared after Playstation took off.  As a Nintendo fan I bought into it because it made me feel better about where my hundreds of dollars were going.  Money makes fanboys.

Instantly rival?  Nah, I got to the PC, 360 and N64 for most of my FPS too but to say the Wii will ignore that route, i doubt it.  Plenty of people will be interested in good FPS for the Wii because it'll be a new expierence with better controls.  You gotta build up this stuff slowly.  Considering how cheap Wii's are if a few FPS get decent reviews who's not going to want one?  Well unless you are into nothing but first person shooters.

I guess it's just around here... but most people around here get the newest FPS, play with it for a month then go back to Castle Wolfenstein, Halo and Perfect Dark.

They should make a Mario FPS though, the more i think about it the more fun and hilarious it would be... plus it would piss off people who are too hardcore and take themselves too seriously.

Bananna Peels in place of Mines?  Walk by Wire Bombombs?  Fire Flower Flamethrowers?  Would be all sorts of fun.  Or at the very least... better then the Southpark FPS.  My one friend gave that to me for free when I bought some PS games from him because he was selling it to get an Xbox.  Why he gives me a free N64 game when I buy a few PS games from him... who knows?

That's how all the reports i've read about him being included were phrased back when it was first announced. 

Quote i find from a wikipedia like site since i'm too lazy to track down an article i read months ago...

"The inclusion of Konami-created character Solid Snake may seem as a conflict of the Smash Bros. paradigm; to only include characters from games made by Nintendo and their second parties (ie. HAL Laboratory), but Sakurai stated that Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima “practically begged” for Snake to be included in the next Smash Bros. game (which, at the time of said “begging”, was Super Smash Bros. Melee, but production of the game was already too far in to make the addition viable). According to Sakurai, discussions for possible other third-party character additions such as SEGA’s Sonic the Hedgehog and Capcom’s Mega Man are underway, but nothing has been confirmed."

I notice two things here: first, there is a rising mantra among some of these editoralists. They claim the Wii is a sort of "Gateway drug," and that once these new gamers become real gamers, they will drop the Wii mote and move to where real games are, which is on the 360 and PS3, apparently. It's very difficult to discern the validity to that because it assumes something years into the future; another way to say: "Sometime, somewhere down the line, for reasons that we can't back with concrete data, in the unforseeable future, the Wii will lose."

But more improtantly, this "hardcore' mantra continues to surface. I'm just going to paste this back in here, because I believe it's quite appropriate:

I am so sick of the term 'hardcore'. It's a load of utter rubbish. I can't express properly the idiocy of continuing to use it in the context of games. GAMES!

It smacks more of the continued erosion of vocabulary of the general populace than it does the category of game being discussed.

Here's an idea. Instead of the age 12-35 male demographic calling itself 'hardcore' in some fervent hope that the games they're playing make them cooler, how about we call them 'bread and butter gamers'. That way, they'd know they're a major part of the industry, and have for many years been exploited by their supposed 'coolness' into buying a whole bunch of regurgitated, uninspired rubbish.

So I thank you all, bread and butter gamers. Thankyou for driving the industry forwards at such break-neck speeds that I've hardly been able to decide which sequel I'd rather play. Thankyou for bitching and moaning and whining about specs and hardcore games so much that both Sony and Microsoft haven't turned a profit on their latest products in their endeavours to please you. Thankyou for mocking those who are just becoming interested for the first time in our industry, thus showing what a wonderful sub-culture we've developed without them.

Grow up you little pukes. Be it Pokemon, Halo3, Bioshock, Little Kitty Island Adventure or Wii-Fit, more people gaming is a good thing, irrespective of what sort of game they're playing.

@ both of you.

Nintendo will ship X number of Wiis by the end of the year regardless of whether they ship them as they make them or skim a few off the top each month and incraese supply at Xmas. Obviously as a business they are going to go with which tactic is most beneficial to the company, ie. making more Wiis available over the holidays will in all likelyhood mean fewer 360/PS3 sales and good buzz for their product. Implying that N is being mean/petty/greedy/etc. for doing this is just childish and naive as any business out there is going to do what is best for it, and yes that includes Sony & MS, doing anything else would be irresponsible & negligent to it's shareholders, simple as that.

@ everybody who thinks N are deserting the core gamer.

You are either new to VGs or intentionally being obtuse. It has been established again and again that Ns core output for Wii is as good if not better that previous N consoles. I mean we're looking at Mario, MK, SSBB, MPC, SPM,Zelda all in the first 12-18 months plus many other lesser known core franchises. Has any other N console had this many of Ns big IPs in such a short time? Just because N are upping their casual(I hate that term) output does not mean they're decreasing traditional. It's the same as saying Apple are ignoring imac fans because ipods have become a big part of their business. THIS IS A NONSENSICAL OUTLOOK!!

@ the guy who said SSBB is casual.

If that is the case then most games outside of flight sims are casual, you are being blinded by bias.

Ok so i lied and looked a little. It was probably this IGN article.

http://wii.ign.com/articles/707/707504p1.html

I have yet to see any evidence that increased PS3 or 360 sales leads to less Wii demand, just as I have yet to see any evidence that increased PSP demand has any effect on DS sales.

Throughout most of the year I'd agree but at Xmas when a parent absolutely must get little Timmy a console and can't find the one he wants, said parent may realistically buy another that is on the shelves. To say the Wii and PS3/360 have no overlap in targeted demographics is wrong imo. Most gamers only buy 1 system per gen.