Actually I was thinking its Mario, Zelda, and Metroid. I can only judge mine and my friends buying patterns and from that I can extrapolate what type of gamer buys what.

There IS in fact a core group of people who bought the Wii specifically for mario, zelda, and/or metroid. Some may have gone on to join the much larger group who then buy and enjoy wii fit, music, etc and the other games by 3rd parties. Some may have turned off their wii when they were done with zelda and mario until the next installment in the series comes along.

That's my only point, I dont really care about the rest of whatever discussion is going on in this thread.

^I chose Z:TP simply because of the big first party titles that define Nintendo every generation (SMG, SSBB, Mario Kart are the others) it was the one with the least sales, and as such more indicative of its audience.
In other words: the less sales a hardcore title has, the less the chances are, all other factors aside, that some of those sales actually went into the "casual" audience. Note that I said all other factors aside, but there's also the empirical judgment that of those 4 games I'd say that Zelda is the one with the least appeal for a "casual" gamer.

@dharh
With Metroid you're entering "super hardcore" territory. I'll meet you there :)
But basically I understand that you agree with the conclusion that the vast majority of "hardcore" first party titles on the Wii are bought over and over by the same 5-8M players.

I really think this is a false dichotomy. Sure there are 'core' fans that must have all the good first party Nintendo games, there are also 'core' fans that don't and only buy some, there are 'casual' customers that only buy minigames and Mario Kart, and there are 'casual' customers that buy Umbrella Chronicles, Mario Strikers etc.

@Demotruk

It's an approximation of course. But some approximations match reality for 30%, others match reality for 90%.

As soon as you admit there are the fans that must have all good first party Nintendo titles, bang... that's your 5-8M group.
All the other intermediate groups you mentioned exist of course, but their existence only _diminishes even more_ the number of hardcore games that are falling in the hands of the really casual Wii owners. And if you start with 5-8M core, you haven't many hardcore games left to start with, except for Mario Kart.

So your intermediate groups will be "hardcore gamers" with different buying pattern than the "core Nintendo fans". They might love Madworld or no More Heroes or Deadly Creatures or JRPGS, but all the numbers for these games are well within the 3M variability we are assuming for the "Nintendo core", so the numerical conclusions still don't change.

That's still the same mistake, you're assuming that people outside of that group don't buy the game, only that group and every one of them buys it. You haven't shown how large the group is.

@Demotruk
If I say that "user belongs to set N if he owns Z:TP and SMG" then N is equal to the intersection of the set of those who own Z:TP and the set of those who own SMG.
If by hypothesis, as I said previously, there's a strong correlation between those two sets (say 90%), then the size of N is the minimum between the number of owners of Z:TP and the number of owners of SMG, with an error of 10%. That's your 5-8M group.

Your only way out is you think the hypothesis is not valid, ie that it is not true that 90% of the Z:TP owners also own SMG.

I think the best chance they have with this is to push it as an alternative control scheme for FPS which would fit well on a FPS console. If it performs anything like the wii mote it will be far superior to the two analogs. They would want to get kits to developers who are in the process of making shooters now for so they could make the control scheme an option. The 360 crowd won't support party like games you see on the wii.

I do think your hypothesis is unsupported. I have little reason to believe there's a 90% correlation between the two, there's certainly no evidence of it.

It's possible that you're basing your hypothesis on anecdotal evidence and self-selecting groups (like enthusiasts on internet forums).