I'm actually going to agree AND disagree with BOTH of you. How's that?!

Seriously though, if we take Nintendo at their word (and they've been following through on it for years now) then Nintendo never intended to "go casual," or to balance "casual" and "hardcore" offerings. Remember, Nintendo's goal, as they themselves have often stated, is disruption, i.e. to make a market  where the values are completely different than they were before, and in which the values of both the core and expanded audiences adapt to meet these new values.

In other words, they don't want games that appeal to "casual" gamers on the one hand, and "hardcore" gamers on the other. They want games that include both at once. And they're currently in the preliminary stage of bringing the two together, as they explained last April in their "bridge games" speech.

I have to admit, I'm deeply intrigued to see if/when/how they pull this off...

so DSi sold 1 million and PSP sold only 100k.....is that for real????????

A 10-1 RATIO ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

WTF??????????

Mario Kart Wii and Punch-Out! are examples of bridge games. 

I would still consider those "core" games but they are accessible enough to casual players. 

Reggie said with a straight face last year at E3 that Animal Crossing was their "core title" .... I think they have paid the price for that. 

You can't ignore us core gamers forever. But I think this is a good thing -- you will now see a more aggressive Nintendo starting at E3. 

People want the big Nintendo guns like a new Mario, new Zelda, new Donkey Kong, Star Fox, etc. ... this is not an audience Nintendo can just ignore. They will now be forced to have more this fall than just Pikmin 3. 

This is too much excitement for one day, Sony's results and forecasts and now NPD sales.

Oh well, it looks like VGC and NPD are pretty close, so nothing surprising here I guess.

@NJ5

pretty close?

PS3 got overtracked by lots

These really low numbers makes me wonder more about the 13m forecast from Sony. They have to ship 1.08m PS3s per month on average to meet that during these uncertain times. They are really confident of their holiday line-up, bullish on when this recession will end and a price cut looks ever more likely.

I think they are banking on the slimmer design buoying sales, but you're right. 

All three companies could be in some trouble to hit their sales targets, even Nintendo (though a Wii price cut would rapidly take care of that). 

They can all blame the recession next year anyway. 

Again, I agree and disagree.

I completely agree that Mario Kart and Punch-Out!! are intended as bridge titles, and if that's the example of what you mean as "core" games then I do agree.

I'm much more ambivalent towards your classification of Animal Crossing: true, many online don't consider it a "core" game, but then again they had no such complaint towards the Gamecube version, and the two are often pegged as being essentially the same game. I've also noticed that Madden and similar sports games have also shifted in definition, albeit the other way. For what it's worth, I'm willing to set aside this part of the conversation, primarily because I don't think the term has a sufficiently firm definition for anyone to say with certainty where each game lies on that scale.

Where I really disagree with you is that we'll see a "more aggressive" Nintendo this year: I believe they will be just as aggressive this year as they were the last. That, by the by, is a good thing, because last year they were quite aggressive indeed. The difference, I think, lies in how they'll play out their strategy; where last year they were in full-blown "Defend the Expanded Audience!" mode, I think they now realize that neither Microsoft or Sony has the slightest idea what the expanded audience wants, so they can now focus more on traditional players, and on bridging the gap between the two.

So basically, I agree on the sentiment, but quibble with the details. Overall, methinks I'm just wasting your time now.

April was not an interesting month.

PS3 overtracked by 18k
Xbox 360 overtracked by 60k
Wii overtracked by 46k
DS tracked perfectly
PSP tracked perfectly
PS2 Undertraked by 48k