Is Wii bad for the games industry...?

[patsu]

And the industry defining hardcore as people that spend more money on games would be wrong. This whole calling people that spend more money on games hardcore thing didn't start until this gen.But people are using the word hardcore wrong. When most people these days say hardcore they actually just mean average gamers.

Words will change in meaning over time, especially when more and more people enter the market. That's why objective measurements are used, so they can be discussed uniformly.

Gamerscore is also one form, but I am not sure it's normalized or comparable across games and platforms.

 

[vazel]

Words will change in meaning over time, especially when more and more people enter the market. That's why objective measurements are used, so they can be discussed uniformly.

Gamerscore is also one form, but I am not sure it's normalized or comparable across games and platforms.

The definition of hardcore hasn't changed. What has happened is that the industry is warping it to use it as one of their bullet points this gen and fanboys are more than happy to comply to make their egos feel bigger. When someone like Microsoft tells you that you are hardcore because you are buying lots of games on their console and are paying to play online on their Live service and are racking up a big gamerscore many are more than content to follow along.

 

[patsu]

Like you said, the classical definition won't matter if it's not meaningful to most people. When the new definitions and standards are widely accepted, they will become the reference. The numbers simply reflect the quantity involved.

Where Wii is concerned, it can certainly bring in its own school of hardcore gamers and casual players. Back on topic, I still fail to see how and why it's bad for the gaming industry in the long run.

 

[psorcerer]

Sorry but I don't agree at all. You don't get to buy your status as a hardcore.
You could buy a lot of games and play them very casually or never even finish any of them.
Or you could buy a few games a year and play them very hardcore. It has nothing to do with money spent IMO.

That doesn't matter. I'm talking from the publisher perspective. When you make "normal" game, you make it for "hardcore" gamers. When you make a quick movie support game, a casual game, a trivia game - you make it for non-hardcore gamer.
That's it.
The tiny differences inside hardcore gamers just don't matter at all.

 

[one]

As for word definitions, I imagine "niche gamers" and "geeky gamers" are other symptoms that may relate to "hardcore gamers".

 

[V3]

It's simple. You're hardcore gamer if you buy lots of games.
Which means in most cases more than 10 games per year.
I'm sure that most of the visitors of this forum are hardcore gamers.
It also means that X360 is a very hardcore console, see: "attach ratio". And Wii is a very casual console.
PS2 was both.
PS3 will be both when people get tired from Wii, soon enough, in a year or two.

If you buy lots of games, you can just be a games collector. Hardcore gamer plays games and unfailingly loyal to it. Beside hardcore gamers tends to dedicate themselves into a single genre or even game. Like a hardcore Counter Strike player. WOW players are mostly hardcore and they spend their money mostly on WOW. A hardcore VF players in Japan spends truck loads of money in the Arcade playing the game. And some of them don't even own or play the console versions.

So you can’t tell from attach ratio if the gamers are hardcore or not. Looking at something like achievements on Xbox live is probably more indicative. And people change envetually, so you can say he was a hardcore WOW player. The casuals that buy Wii, they might turn hardcore.

 

[patsu]

The casuals that buy Wii, they might turn hardcore.

Yes, but the way we talk about Wii gamers, it sounded like they might turn into zombies.

As for word definitions, I imagine "niche gamers" and "geeky gamers" are other symptoms that may relate to "hardcore gamers".

Why yes, and arguably the most hardcore of them all... dead gamers who passed away due to non-stop gaming.

 

[V3]

Why yes, and arguably the most hardcore of them all... dead gamers who passed away due to non-stop gaming.

Well I think we called those people 'Addict'. The dead ones, well they ODed.

Again I think most of B3D members aren't hardcore gamers, more graphic fanatics, that's why Wii is so look down at.

 

[ninzel]

That doesn't matter. I'm talking from the publisher perspective. When you make "normal" game, you make it for "hardcore" gamers. When you make a quick movie support game, a casual game, a trivia game - you make it for non-hardcore gamer.
That's it.
The tiny differences inside hardcore gamers just don't matter at all.

Well if we are talking from a publishers standpoint,I disagree again.
Most games that I imagine you would call hardcore,are being made to appeal to the largest audience possible and aim to be as mainstream as possible.
A game like Halo 3 is a perfect example. They might not come right out and see that for fear of offending their base,but it's reality.
The lines aren't as black and white as you think.

 

[fearsomepirate]

The Wii is affecting the sales and production of the games you love the same way that DDR, Guitar Hero, Singstar, Mario Party, and so on affected them last gen: Not in the slightest. Are those guitars you can buy in Wal-Mart putting Gibson out of business? Has Kia sounded the death knell for Mercedes and Porsche?

Basically, you've failed to differentiate the products and have assumed that because products A and B are the same sort of thing (the way a Kia and a Benz are both cars), the sales of one significantly affect the other, i.e. people who buy A would buy B if A did not exist, and vice-versa.

 

[oli2]

Hi all,

1) I am very surprised at all those debates around "hardcore gaming" on fora on Internet since a year or 2 : during and before PS2 era, hardcore gaming, when discussed, was something linked a way or another to "PC gaming".
Never to console gaming. Nobody felt anything wrong with that.

2) IMO, there are many "hardcore gamers" playing on Wii but does not feel the need to claim to be to "justify" playing on it.
Those who are, are part of the main strategy of Sony and Microsoft : elitism.
As an example : i am certainly very skillfull player of RE4 Wii (i finish the game in less than 2 hours on normal mode). I don't define myself as a "hardcore RE4 Wii player", but simply as a good player ...

3) On topic, since at least 2003-2004, Iwata & Co have been clear that Nintendo would be aiming not only to so called "hardcore gamers" but to everybody.
That is exactly what is happening now on DS for example, which is certainly for "hardcore gamers" a heaven now. Give the Wii some time to know the same fate ...

(i mean : Sony and Ms are at the top tiers of the Market now. Nobody expect them not to go downwards.
Nintendo is at the bottom. Why are some people suspecting Nintendo not to go up ? It is surprising, given the DS example ...)

So, my personnal vote to the OP is "no".

PS : i would find interesting if there where the same topic about MS & Sony. "Are they bad for the industry ?". I have things to say about that, but i don't want to go off topic here ...

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

It's a fair point,but there has to be some level of passionate investment on the hobby.
Exactly the makeup and level is up for debate.

I dont think so. For example I love cars. However i'm 21 so there is no way that I can afford anything beyond crap. Does that make me a lesser car fan compared to some dubai oil millionair that can afford 20 Ferrari's who will never see the light of day?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

What's really needed is a proper lexicon of definitions that everyone uses to aid discussion.

In all these debates someone using a term to mean one thing encounters someone who uses the same term a different way and their arguments dance around each other before settling on arguing what meaning is right. As long as this persists, the world's supply of quotation marks will be used up as those being careful with their 'hardcore' and 'casual' phrasing find themselves unable to talk about the developing gaming market without quotation marks around every fifth word!

With have plenty more words to choose from. We can have mainstream, conventional, traditional, existing, virgin, casual, avid, broad, niche, high-intensity, etc. gamers. Personally I'd like to put a freeze on any such debates of the market until a language convention is adopted that facilitates understanding and avoids these common definition debates, but I doubt many have my enthusiasm for regulated language!

 

[psorcerer]

I see that it doesn't get anywhere, so let's do some math.
PS2 has a lot of very convenient big numbers to do some statistics.
Let's see: at the end of 2005 PS2 sold 91 mln hardware units and 863 mln software units.
This gets us a nice attach ratio of 9.48
The problem is: I want annual averages, but numbers are big enough, so, average it right away: 9.48/5 = 1.9 per year.
This means that average PS2 gamer buys less than 2 games per year (PS2 was a good casual console, y'now).
But what about distribution? We can't use normal, because you start from 0 and go to infinity (or let's say some people have hundreds of PS2 games which can count as infinity here).
So I'll use log-normal, it suits perfectly.
Average is at 1.9, so at least 50% of buyers have 1.9 or less games, that' the nature of log-normal.
STDEV will be approximately: exp(1.9/3) = 1.88, which means that 3.78 is the number of games that approx. 50 + 34 = 84% of buyers will have per year.
We can stop here and announce that every buyer that purchased more than 4 games per year is only in 16% of the whole buyer population and thus can be considered non-casual = hardcore gamer.
But let's go one step further: at 2*STDEV the numbers will be 7.5 games for 1% of buyers.
Which means that only 1% of gamers were buying 8 or more games per year for PS2.
Or if you own 35 or more games for PS2 you're without a doubt very hardcore PS2 gamer.

 

[one]

As for word definitions, I imagine "niche gamers" and "geeky gamers" are other symptoms that may relate to "hardcore gamers".

Related to these categorization, NY Times does interesting characterization...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/a...92&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

But it isn’t just traditional gamers who are flocking to Mr. Miyamoto’s latest creation, the Wii. Eighteen months ago, just when video games were in danger of disappearing into the niche world of fetishists, Mr. Miyamoto and Satoru Iwata, Nintendo’s chief executive, practically reinvented the industry.

IMO Wii Sports is an important step of which success is not reliant on flashy characters IP.

 

[AlphaWolf]

IMO Wii Sports is an important step of which success is not reliant on flashy characters IP.

And I don't doubt hardcore gamers who want somewhat realistic responsive skill based play would argue its a step back.

There's no doubt that wii sports is a success, but now that it's been done what do you do with it next time? Improve the graphics? But people didn't buy it for the graphics. Make the gameplay more responsive? But people just want it to be fun, not demanding.

 

[one]

And I don't doubt hardcore gamers who want somewhat realistic responsive skill based play would argue its a step back.

There's no doubt that wii sports is a success, but now that it's been done what do you do with it next time? Improve the graphics? But people didn't buy it for the graphics. Make the gameplay more responsive? But people just want it to be fun, not demanding.

What I was pointing out about is mainstream accessibility or universal acceptance. In my previous categorization, it's related to "geeky gamers". It becomes clearer if you compare Wii Sports with Nintendo's older games featuring their characters. It wouldn't sell as much if it was "Mario Sports" since some people actively hate kiddy characters. Then, what if it's a realistic EA-style sports game featuring real athletes? I don't think it's as universal as Wii Sports hence would sell less. This kind of abstraction in game design reminds me of the old age of console games when Pacman and Tetris were international mega hits.

 

[itsmydamnation]

And I don't doubt hardcore gamers who want somewhat realistic responsive skill based play would argue its a step back.

There's no doubt that wii sports is a success, but now that it's been done what do you do with it next time? Improve the graphics? But people didn't buy it for the graphics. Make the gameplay more responsive? But people just want it to be fun, not demanding.

that is such a strawman arguement, more responsive doesn't equal more demanding.

Also i didn't know that there are only 6 sports in the world.........

 

[AlphaWolf]

that is such a strawman arguement, more responsive doesn't equal more demanding.

I don't see the strawman. More responsive definitely does mean more demanding in terms of competitive play.

Also i didn't know that there are only 6 sports in the world.........

There's a definite limit on the number that will work as a game type and that people will care about. I don't doubt they'll milk it as much as they can but I don't know that wii sports2 with fishing, jai alai, judo etc will differentiate itself enough to have people lining up for it. While wii sports and wii play may define the wii's success, but will iterations of them be enough to carry them into a new generation, or have the first ones already filled that bill?

I've no doubt that the wii will have 1000 minigames before this generation is over, but I have to wonder what the tolerance threshold in the market is for them.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I don't doubt they'll milk it as much as they can but I don't know that wii sports2 with fishing, jai alai, judo etc will differentiate itself enough to have people lining up for it. While wii sports and wii play may define the wii's success, but will iterations of them be enough to carry them into a new generation, or have the first ones already filled that bill?

This point is mirrored in EyeToy. The original Play shifted millions of peripherals. Subsequent Play's were better games, adding coop for one thing, but were reviewed and bought far less because the novelty was gone. "More of the same" doesn't sell units over the long term. The games need to evolve.