im fine with it. 3rd parties will still make the 'hard core' games while N makes fun casual games. Plus, what is their idea of fun casual games. Metroid, Zelda, and Mario Bros games have typically been more what I consider hardcore gamer games and I don't see them straying from these titles.

This trend will continue and continue .If today there is still some challenging and hard Nintendo games that will be dissappearing in the future .Nintendo thinks their success comes from the casuals that like to be amused with electronic games as Nintendogs ,Brain Trainings etc .Even New Super Mario is now something very accesible .I have seen lots of casuals (or supercasuals more like ) clapping and wanting to play when they did see some old 2D Mario game tthrough an emulator running in my Dreamcast ,but then if they were faced to a 3D Mario they felt inmediately challenged about the controls and having to deal with the 3D environment and they did give up in minutes .


This doesnt sound well for core and hardcore gamers alike .


And to add my two cents to the flame war :Nintendo and Miyamoto ,the Judas of Gaming !!!

Please, Diomedes, quit preaching your nonsense. Just because Nintendo makes more casual games, doesn't mean they'll stop making Mario, Zelda, and Metroid. It's not like it'll kill all that is gaming if a few girls and old people want to play.

 There are platinum medals?

Damn it! Now I need to practice more.

Miyamoto is saying what should be obvious: Difficulty in itself does not make a game fun.

 I remember playing a Contra game on the PS2. I have never played a harder Contra game before or since. Every step of the game required rote memorization of hazards and how to avoid them. In order to learn about these hazards, you had to die to them. After a series of deaths, you learned how to get to the next phase of the first level, so that when you have to start all over, you can waste all those lives learning the next phase of the first level.

It was dehumanizing, like the game was trying to program me to be the perfect computer response to its hard-coded attack patterns. After we beat the first boss, my buddy and I got sick of it and never played it again. They spent so much time making it hard, they forgot to put the fun in.

I can see Metroid and Zelda becoming more simplified in the future to suit the casual's tastes.

Platinum Medals in Wii Sports are effectively perfect scores. The Bowling ones are by far the easiest three to get (I have two, still working on Power Throws).

Now see there, you're detailing what I think could be one of two different things when it comes to difficulty. I think of something like Zelda or Resident Evil as hard - where the game forces you to think of every conceivable option in order to achieve a goal. That to me is the definition of hard.

What you're describing is something I see in games like Contra, Viewtiful Joe and god knows how many old school sh'mups where the game forces you to simply remember something by forcing you to suffer it the hard way. There's a huge difference, I'd rather learn to do something in progression rather than learn by steps.

Example in Zelda: "Hmm, I've done 'A' which didn't work, 'B' could work but I'd have to think about 'C' maybe as a contingency"

Example in Contra: "Ok I kill the guy with the rocket launcher, than big ass helicopter comes, I step back two inches and a nasty pops out the ground..."

Maybe this is a very badly written example or I couldn't define it clearly enough, but there's a difference between learning something, and being forced to remember something and I don't think that's a good way to prove difficulty in games.

I can't

 I thought that was Phantom Hourglass?

Not because we said so, simply because it's impossible to produce a single player game that is as challenging as a similarly constructed multiplayer one. It's simple logic: obviously, a group of experienced humans will always be a more difficult enemy than a group of AI controlled combatants in any given game.

So if challenge is your goal, why would you ever want to play single player games anyway? Ninja Gaiden is one of only a few examples I can think of in modern times that might even remotely approach the difficulty level we're apparently seeking (and if you'll remember, I've given it it's due credit in the past).

Looking at this passage you wrote:

If you want to get good at a certain multiplayer game, it takes time and practice and devoting yourself to playing that game more than other games to keep up with the other players who only play that game or that type of game and keep improving at it. Frankly, usually I don't find this worth it. Which is why I play very few select online shooters for a period of time and then eventually move on from them to cause I want to play something else.

You are effectively saying that multiplayer games are too hard. To compete in them, you need to work very hard, and practice for a long time -- whereas in single player games, you can practice for only a short while and master them. Therefore, you can play more games in a shorter span of time.

And that's a completely legitimate argument, Ck! I agree with it. It's just odd that someone would decry casual games for being too easy while simultaneously complaining about the complexity and challenge inherent in mastering high level multiplayer games. It reminds me once again of the car analogy: anyone going faster than me is a maniac, while anyone going slower is an old fogey. Apparently, the difficulty (or speed) of Hardcore, traditional single player games is absolutely perfect!

Or, we can agree that those games are absolutely perfect for you, personally. If the challenge/graphics/complexity/etc. are just right for you on the PS3/360, Ck, no problem. That's great! I really hope you enjoy those games, and I mean that. I just hope people can accept that some may want more challenging games, and still others want less challenging ones, and there is nothing wrong with those positions, either.