Are Hardcore gamers becoming irrelevant?

"Jamie Hall, aka Genki-Rocket, is a blogger at Fragcast and also a long-term contributor to the comments section of Three Speech. We got in touch with Jamie due to a comment he made and asked him to come and write a post for Three Speech, and here it is. If it inspires anyone else to get involved then mail us at [email protected]. Over to Jamie…

It's been an ongoing theme on the personal blog I share with some friends that the nature of the games industry is changing – we've seen great swathes of people introduced into the industry who've never played games before – and modern consoles perform a huge array of tasks many of which only have a peripheral use for games purposes.

All this change has got me thinking: Are hardcore gamers becoming irrelevant?"

[skitzoid]

It sure seems that way. The Wii says hi.
The sad part is "hardore gamers" are the people that pay the high launch prices for the consoles and purchase a higher percentage of titles per year. Yet we seem to get the finger shown to us with sell it now patch it later (maybe) title after title.

[perseus]

...but I think casuals are a bigger market in total. That's probably why the publishers are focusing more on them to the detriment of the core gamers.

Although, I've been wondering recently if the industry nowadays is really that different than was before. The idea of "casual versus hardcore" hasn't come up until recently, but then again, there was no such thing as a hardcore gamer until games became more complicated and neglected the people who just wanted a 20 minute gaming session after work/school (with the PS2/XBox/etc.). [EDIT: I'm of course only talking about console gaming, not PC gaming. There have always been games like Civilization that only appealed to a small segment of the populace.]

I'm not that worried about being neglected though. There will always be games designed by gamers like me, like BF:Bad Company and GT5, and those are the games I'll get for myself. The casual games like Sonic and Mario and Wii Sports are the games I'll get for my family. I'm happy both ways.

[season007]

to me it sounds like Drinking water market is irrelevant now since more people drink soft drink nowadays....

isn't it pure non-sense? yea wii open a different market and it gains them profit, but so what, does that mean the traditional gamer market NO LONGER spend a penny on games and no profit will be turned out since wii comes out?

come on...yea wii turns out to be successful in gaining profit but it doesn't mean it will be the only business on earth that worth doing...

[InYourMom]

and there will be enough developers to cater to both.

[SKUD]

The gaming industry needs the hardcore gamer to survive. End of story.

[BrotherNick]

Useless statement is useless. If only people would see that there can be a healthy mix of the two, like most technologies. Oh, if you read the article, I was one of the buyers of cooking mama for the wii and ds. It's fun lol, made me want to learn to cook for real.

[Maddens Raiders]

hardcores like myself are becoming irrelevant. Everything is being geared or "dumbed-down" more for the entry level Wii audience out there, because that's where the *money is. Games like Gran Turismo, Final Fantasy, even Resistance and Unreal Tournament are just too difficult, control & button heavy for the entry level user.

Developers are moving more and more to court the casual crowd - It's the latest move du jour in the industry. Once the industry goes through the entire cycle of this trend, the hardcore gamer will still be there, but most likely playing only on the PC, or maybe back to the arcades (where we belong). I am not a casual gamer at all and long for the days of standing or sitting at an arcade machine with two rolls of quarters, going deaf from all of the arcade sounds. *sigh* The truly hardcore gamers are being forced into relics of the past.

[Noodlecup]

is a PC gamer, I find it funny that xbox live gamers think they're "hardcore" because they pay to play, I think that makes them stupid tbh

[Iamback]

YES for Nintendo