Since the vocal minorities found places to make their voices heard the most.

Its evident from your "rant", your a fanboy.  Nintendo's core/franchiced audiance will always be please as long as the keep up the "GREAT" releases of those franchises.  While MS and Sony cant wait to "COPY" the leader this generation with "Waggle, motion" control. People like you are satisfied with your halfass HD grafics that dont outsell anything low rez and anything thats the same game with a new number behind it expampl, part 2 or a part 3, looks good played it before.  These casual people created a $3 billion market with 1 non HD title (Wii Fit) well over anything HD has sold. Activition's Guitar Hero series says "We are the leading series this gen" Not GTA 4, sorry Halo.  Gose to show you "Core" gamers are easier to please. You need to think alittle long term and maintain aswell as New audiance who'll become core = Mo'money.  So while the HD boys try and play catch up. Nintendo is already thinking how to get you to play games and keep you playing games.

Last gen the xbox outsold the gamecube, so gamers had lost interest in what Nintendo had to offer. But Nintendo saw the PS2's succes and realized it wasn't the ''core'' gamer that made the console what it was. They made a smart move because competing with Sony and Microsoft for the favor of the 'core' or 'hardcore' gamer would have surely let to another lost generation. It seems they realized what made the PS2 work sooner then Sony, perhaps they figured (arrogantly) that those people would simply upgrade from a PS2 to a PS3 eventually. Nintendo hasn't lost anything this generation, they gave up the core gamer just like the core gamer had given up on them.

More like the 'core' gamer is a buzz word invented by people who wanted to distinguish themselves from other types of gamers, which they now identify as 'casuals' because 'light' gamer wasn't enough and their console is no longer selling as well.

For Nintendo, its business as usual.  They never stopped marketing to the same group.  From the NES to now, they've always marketed to the same group.  The 'general audiance'.  People keep calling it 'kids and grannies', but that doesn't change the fact that what made Nintendo successful in the past and now is they made games for any age group.  For the most part, it seems a lot of people online can't see past their WiiFit boards to understand Nintendo's 'core' audiance.  Mario, Animal Crossing, Smash Bros and Pokemon cover a lot more than just a 10 year age group.

^ Truth. I've recently been saying that this generation is Nintendo's return to their original values, their core design philosophies, it's just that we've lost sight of what those were in the N64 and GC generations.

if developpers want to go bankrupt just because they think the wii is kiddy, I really don't see what nintendo could do to change that...

I posted this in another thread, but it seems applicable here. The industry has been a back and forth between 2 major forces. The gaming side of the force, and the corporate side of the force. The hardcore is a recent phenomenon, and they don't decide anything important about the industry. They are the most fickle consumer, ready to ditch Nintendo for being "too kiddy" or even hop back and forth between Guitar Hero and Rock Band depending on their favorite guitar controller or their favorite band. Hardcore fans have no loyalty. Casual fans are the ones you can count on to get a system to sell over 100 million. Game Boy, PS1, PS2, DS, all casual-friendly. All hardcore systems fail. DC, GC, PS3.




Console Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Magnavox

(lawsuits and dirty money, stealing the magic from Ralph Baer)

Episode 2: Atari: The Clone Wars

(years of clones and fierce competition, arcades and Atari bring gaming to the masses)

Episode 3: Revenge of the 2600

(Bushnell is ousted from the Atari Republic, corporate interests take over Atari, the first "movie-games" are made, the market crashes, darkness for many years)

Episode 4: NES: The New Hope

(Nintendo creates the D-Pad, the Game Boy, platforming, quality control, and the modern console era)

Episode 5: The Hardcore Strikes Back

(non-gaming companies take over the industry, CDs bring FMVs and cutscenes to several consoles for new cinematic "movie-games," FF, MGS, birth of modern so-called "hardcore", freeze GameCube sales in carbonite)

Episode 6: Return of the Wii

(games for everybody, more diversity in genres and even control methods, "the revolution," we all get to party with Ewoks, Ralph Bear, and the ghost of Gunpei Yokoi, the empire is crushed to a distant 3rd place and gets outsold by an exercise peripheral, and the empire is so crushed that they actually start making motion controlled party games)

Epic post and so true.

Haha, that analogy is hilarious.

Although responding to your point above, I would venture to say that the PSX and PS2 weren't initially casual based systems.  Though they later did have tons of games that marketed towards 'casual' gamers, when they came out they were marketed as more 'high end, expensive' alternatives to the current consoles on the market.  And especially with the PS2, marketed with the promise of action/sports/racing/RPG titles.  Hardly the 'casual' standard.  I'd venture to say the current PS3 is the ultimate goal of Sony's true goal in making a console, but their last 2 ventures just didn't have the hardware to push the envelope in their gens.

On the Flip side, the GC was sort of a mix.  A system that was trying to capture the high end graphics, but in a cheaper system.  And it succeeded, creating a system as cheap in comparison to its competitors but just as good in graphics.  In all reality, the GameCube was a marvel in console engineering (though it could have used bigger media).  It just never took off because of the bias towards Nintendo and the overwhelming third party support for PS2.  I don't think it was exactly a 'hardcore' system.  It was just like all of Nintendos past systems...just  lost in the fray because of the PS2.  And that's too bad, because it was the one time Nintendo actually stepped up to the plate graphically.

The N64 stepped up to the plate. It just wasn't that efficient at it as the GC.