ah cool beans

 If that is the case then it's much more likely that the market of 'hardcore' was just horribly over-exhaggerated to begin with. Of course, i'd ask, who over-exhaggerated, cause I didn't, and looking at the sales of stuff like MGS and Final Fantasy on PS2, not many PS2 owners did.

 Crashing? No. I'd even go as far as saying the marketing for hardcore gamers is expanding, and those on the PS360 are far beyond what the Wii market is capable of providing.

 OF course these terms like hardcore and casual are just definitions we make up in our head, and mean different things to everyone who uses them.

There are two ways I see gamers define hardcore,

A) The players

B) The games

People who follow "A" believe that the game doesn't matter, but how you play it. I often see WoW players define each other as hardcore and casual.

People who follow "B" believe that games are defined as hardcore or casual. I often see it used in console arguments, for example, Wii Sports is casual and Halo is hardcore.

If you favor the "B" definition, I want to know what you think Chess is and why.

We all know that Chess is hardcore, Checkers is a bridge game, and Monopoly is the kind of casual crap that is ruining the board game industry ... After all how can you respect a game with a cartoon millionare who drives around in his little car buying property when you could play a game where knights and pawns face death on a battlefield.

I like this one, defining casual/hardcore by the amount of blood in the game makes a lot of sense.

The distinction with Chess is that you CAN be hardcore or casual about it if you wish, the game actually provide enough depth for you to study, analyse and be hardcore about.

A lot of Wii game do no have this distinction, they are made deliberately shallow to appeal to mass market but fail to provide the depth a hardcore gamer needs to keep him hook.

This of course is also generalising and I'm sure their are many games on the wii that you can get hardcore about, no least of which some of the system's evergreen titles such as Mario Kart etc.

With regards to the Wii, the Stigma is mainly tied to the fact that the wii promote alternative gaming which a traditional gamer may have very little to no interest in. When a console's flagship title include such game as Wii Fit and Wii Music one does not need to wonder why many teens and young adult look at the system and find it unsatisfying.

Call it an illusion, but it is one that Nintendo itself promoted to begin with, so I have no qualm in calling them out on it.

The wii lacks the high adrenaline visceral appeal of the PS360. It lacks voilence, it lacks sex and it lacks 'mature content' which is the staple food of a selective audience who have consider themselves 'hardcore' gamers for the past few generation.

If anything, Checkers is casual. Chess is pretty hardcore in comparsion.

A lot of PS3/360 games are very shallow too, starting with most FPS games which I never see people calling casual. Of course you could point out how people will perfect their FPS playing in online matches, but there are people perfecting their aim on the Duck Hunt game on Wii Play too (another low complexity game like most FPSs).

As for your last paragraph, that's just a sad definition of hardcore as I implied in my previous reply...

You can be very hardcore about Wii Fit.  The slalom mini-games are hard as hell, same with the head-butting, not to mention the workouts themselves.  A hardcore Wii Fit player would have sexy abs.

Even Wii Sports is tough, the bumper-bowling mini game had me pulling my hair out, the strike-game is hard too.

A hardcore Wii Music player?  Check out some of the stuff on youtube, people dedicate a lot of time to that game, and are making some good music.

If you want to just go by difficulty, the easiest games I can think of are RPG's.  They have easiness built right in, the longer you play it, the easier it becomes.

Monopoly is my favourite board game, followed very closely by Chess..... all other games fall well behind.

I suppose Monopoly is like WoWarcraft... you have to grind away going around and around in order to win (if there are a decent number of players there will likely not be an actual "end" to a game for weeks, which is why we usually stop after a time and just count our value.

Chess is like Fire Emblem or something and Draughts (proper name for "Checkers") is like Wii Sports Tennis.

Then there is Cluedo (Puzzle game like Phoenix wright perhaps (I haven't played PW though) )

and Scrabble (Brain Training?)

Ludo (Mario Party... although that game is already a board game, but it'a all I can think of other than perhaps a racing game)

Twister [ok not really a board game] = Wii Fit