Signs for it have been on the horizon since quite a while, but I must admit that my bias clouded my judgment. In hindsight I can't believe that I couldn't see it clearly and even defended Nintendo vehemently in the past couple of years. I should have gotten suspicious a year ago when their big holiday titles were Animal Crossing and Wii Music, two casual games, although Reggie dared to call the former a core game. This year is even a step back, because their's only one holiday title, New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

Nintendo made their biggest game of the year ready for casuals and kids with simple, fun gameplay, stylish visuals, multiplayer modes and the Super Guide or whatever this new feature is called that allows you to watch the game beating itself. To the disappointment of most of the remaining Nintendo fans, there's no online functionality found in NSMB Wii. A feature that should be standard in today's games, leaving it out can only be explained by ridiculous laziness considering that this game is not much more than a port of the DS game from three years ago.

There's no excuse, because LittleBigPlanet already showed that online multiplayer works quite well for a 2D platformer and to add insult to injury, NSMB Wii is also much less taxing on the hardware it runs on than Sony's game. Once again, Nintendo is taking the easy route here. Earlier this year they saw that the Wii's momentum was about to collapse and quickly produced a game with a big brand name in the hopes that it would help them to fend off the threat that was the incoming blockbuster Modern Warfare 2 which, like usual, wouldn't be released on the Wii.

I know that Nintendo is all about the money, but lately they have cut too many corners even for my likings. At least Super Mario Galaxy 2 seems to be a polished game of which Nintendo has made far too few in the last two years. Don't get me wrong, I'll be still buying NSMB Wii like the sheep that I am, but from now on I'll look at Nintendo's decisions more critical. Like this guy has done. If there was ever one way to accurately judge whether it was Nintendo abandoning the hardcore gamers or the hardcore abandoning Nintendo, New Super Mario Bros. Wii is it. Finally we get to see the true picture.

Mario was core when the only people that played games were eight year olds.  The game industry has moved on, Nintendo hasn't and to demonstrate this the release a game a year too late with half the features that were present in LBP and they expect the core to swallow this?