All I said was that the difference in the relative number when compensating for those factors wouldn't be that big, and I stand by it until someone actually does the math and shows I'm wrong :P

By "PS2 kids" I meant the new generation that was introduced to games in the PS1-PS2 era, that incluedes both some of the "core" and a good deal of the "wider audience".

And gaiming was quite mainstream on the PS2/GBA days. It did loose an audience, but it got other, and that was my point. Sure it would be better to keepp the old audience as well as the new one, but it's not like the former is more important. Let's say games went away from the point they came in the last few generations and all of them go back to the "basics" (I'm not talking simply, or even mainly, graphic-wise here, just to make it clear). We'd be getting back some of that old audience (some just left because they changed), and maybe capture some people who wasn't part of that audience but would be attracted to the same values, but we sure would loose a lot of market in the way.

And 3D Mario may never have been as popular as 2D Mario, true, but I bet the number of million selling series of games got up from the old days.

But you haven't done the math to prove it either, you even said you didn't want to take the time, so why should I do it?

Actually most of the people who were introduced to gaming in the Playstation era are considered part of the core, remember these are kids we're talking about.

Actually the wider audience of the playstation ear would care, see the wider auidence games of the playstation era, were also the less complex core games, many were sports games and more simpler/arcade style games.

No gaming wasn't mainstream in the PS2 era, this is a myth, when did you see the older audience and women gravitate to the PS2 as you have seen with the DS and Wii? You make a mistake in thinking its a zero sum game, Wii/DS has succeeded in reaching the wider audience much better than the PS2, nowadays you see women and older floks playing the Wii and DS, people who never played before, Nitnendo is also reaching out to the Playsation wider audience, and also the old-school audience who played back in the NES era,only people complaining are the current core.

Ah, but look at NSMB DS, going to be over 20 million sold, and look at Galaxy, less than 10, so there could be as many as 10 million out there waiting for a 2D mario on the Wii.

Good article.

The Wii has some things in common with the good old NES, but the NES had two things the Wii doesn´t....major love from 3rd parties (it was THE system to put their games on..or the only system?...the Sega Master System couldn´t even bother the NES a little back then, except in Europe from what I´ve heard) and complete domination in Japan and North America.

Really, the NES was such a beast it had something like what, 80% of the market?...something not even the mighty DS can achieve.

So, what he's saying is that evolution in gameplay is a bad thing, and games should stay exactly the same as they were 20 years ago?

^No, more like he's saying that games should retain a more arcade feel, and not the cinematic feel that many games have taken

I'm not saying you should do the math, I'm saying since no one did it and it's not really obvious without doing it, then no one can really make a point about that. So we can't really say the market hasn't actually contracted all that much just as we can't say it has, that was my point.

Yeah, they are, but how we call them makes no difference, they got mainstream during the PS2 era anyway. The only thing that matters is that this kind of gameplays brought them in and that they're a sizeable group too, just as the NES era one is/was.

By mainstream I mean it was easy to find a PS2 wherever you went. It was still mainly kids (both male and female, and that's part of my point. Many girls have been playing PS2s as kids a lot more than PS1 or even SNES, maybe NES) or males up to their mid-30s, so no 50+ crowd or adult women, but did the NES really have that crowd so much? Videogames were mainly a guy thing back then too. And my point is, sure, the Wii and DS brought a new audience (some recurring from NES days, but a LOT new, wich the NES itself didn't have), but how many people would have been alienated if we only had Wii and DS? An awfull lot, I tell you.

Sure, and there should be a 2D Mario on Wii. And that's exactly my point. There should be a 2D Mario, but there should also be a 3D Mario. I think it's obvious gaming can attract different people in different ways and for different reasons. The PS1/2 era brough in gamers with different tastes then the NES/SNES one did, but that doesn't mean these gamers are any less worthy. What that does mean is that we should support "both" (that's oversimplifying, but anyway) styles. Just as much as it is (and was) a mistake to alienate part of the NES crowd, it would be a mistake to do that to the PS2 guys. So it's not like developers and manufacteres should focus one the one or the other, they should do both.

Some games should be more arcade while some should be "cinematic", and this variety can only do this industry good. Now of course you can't simply double the production of games, so we will have to wait for a ballance there, and that's the right aim to have. Past few generations on home consoles were all about exploring this new side of gaming (handhelds kept the "traditional values" alive in the mean time), perhaps going a bit too far. But now that it has been done, the aforementioned ballance should be pursued, and not an all way comeback to the "roots", as that would be as much of a mistake as ignoring them.

And that's why I disagree with Malstrom, it's not like you have to, or even can, have a equivallent for every NES titles there was on a single console, for that would forbid you covering other areas that are just as important.

Sorry for the long post and grammar :P