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Maybe you didn't get what I was talking about.

Bring out two Home consoles in the same generation from the same company just wouldn't work.

that's exactly what i thought the "original poster" (aka OP) had stated in his initial post.

I didn't see anyone post what I posted, in substance, five posts, much more, 20 posts, ago. You either didn't read and understand my post or you can't count. I'm not going to go back and read every single reply.

It's your presentation of your idea and vigorous defense that is offensive. The opinion that you've expressed about casual gamers being different from hardcore gamers and wanting less challenging games is offensive. You're trying to set the labels for who is and isn't hardcore and deny a whole group of people a chance at the challenging games.

That offends me. You're an elitist who doesn't even understand his own ideas. You refuse to understand that you are not an actual normal hardcore gamer. You are merely a person who likes eye-candy and certain franchise games.

Furthermore, you're only making the labels and applying them so that you can ignore the poster's opinion. That's not valid debate, and that's why you're not getting valid debate in return. If you want valid debate, drop the labels, and listen to the argument's elements.

You just don't understand video game markets and economics. Nintendo doesn't always, but they've been at it a lot longer than you and are doing fine. You're overestimating how many people are unhappy with the Wii.

You never wanted contrary thoughts. You expressed in your original that you had "no doubt" that your idea could work.

Ok I'm going to tone it down a bit here.

I never said that there is "no doubt" that it would work, I said there is no doubt in my mind that there is a large enough market to support the two consoles.

My vigorous defence is in response to vigorous offence. Most of the critical responses come off as "Nintendo are great. This idea opposes Nintendo. This idea is therefore evil" and then proceed to go off on a rant about whining and being a fanboy.

Also, I don't understand how you think that a label of "casual gamer" is offensive. It is not intended to be. I don't really like the term "hardcore", but I honestly can't think of a better term. The debate provided led me to believe that the respondant fit this label. So I think the "casual" console would be more fitting to him.

And who gave you the idea that I think "hardcore" games are all about the graphics? My frustration stems from the fact that the quality of Nintendo's most popular franchises has been compromised due to their effort to appeal to casual gamers. Twilight Princess was ridiculously easy. Metroid Prime 3 was too easy. Donkey Kong has gone from platformer king to laughing stock spinoff racing game. What happened to 1080 Snowboarding and Starfox and Excitebike and Wave Race and F-Zero and Blast Corps and some of the other good Nintendo franchises? They have been replaced by WarioWare, Brain Training, Wii Play, Mario Party, and other mediocre "casual" wares. Good third party games are extremely scarce, and Nintendo let Rare, Silicon Knights, and Factor 5 go without getting replacements for their stellar offerings.

Sure the Wii has enjoyed success so far, and overall I still like the console despite my frustrations, it could be much better though IMO. I can live without the great graphics. If you browse editorials and even several threads on this site though, you will indeed find many frustrated Wii owners lately. Pick up the November issue of EGM and there is a long article analyzing the low quality of Wii software. If this keeps up I belive the popularity will slowly fade.

Now if someone wants to provide a different view without using the term "fanboy", telling me to go buy an Xbox 360 (I have one thanks), or to quit "whining", I would be glad to hear it.

It sounds like you're unhappy with the current complexity of the games. They are too easy. There are several reasons for this and I think they are short-term problems, some of which would have affected even a "hardcore" console.

One reason is that the system and control scheme is new. It is a challenge for the programmers to learn the system and design a control scheme that is both challenging, but not impossible. Make a game too difficult, it'll get terrible reviews and not sell. Same goes for too easy in the long run, but it's easier to ere on the side of too easy this early in the life of the system. In 2 years, the games you complain about should indeed be more difficult, at least in spots. That leads to another reason.

The game franchises you mention, Zelda, Metroid (although less so), all the Mario games; all are aimed at children. Nintendo doesn't design games for adults. They design them so that children can play and finish them, and if possible, they design them to still appeal to adults, but primarily, for children.

Another reason is your gaming age. You've probably played video games for so long that you're just too good. What seems easy to you is actually still difficult for younger gaming age players. So, while the difficulty level probably hasn't changed that much considering control scheme inflation, it seems easier to you because of your gaming age deflation.

Here, patience is your friend. Given enough time, with Wii sales so high, third party gaming companies who want to make a lot of money will learn what they need to learn to make good games for the Wii, and will do so. As they learn, the difficulty, and other things, get better and better.

You say you want your franchise favorites made, and made in a particular way. Many have told you that your style of game is available on the other systems. In theory, Nintendo could design your style of game with their franchise and sell it on those systems...that's probably a better solution than a double console...but it won't happen for the same reason.
Money. Nintendo wants a monopoly on their franchises so that they sell more systems and sell more licenses for games. Making their own great games is just a part of the money making process. The economy of making money for consoles is not in making games or systems (although Nintendo is making a profit on systems this time), but it's in the selling of licenses and granting of official sanction.

The only reason listed above that wouldn't necessarily affect a "hardcore" system would be the designing for children...but it would get swallowed by the competing interests of making more money. Economically, it doesn't make sense in the long run. For us either. As long as our favorite system has casual gamers keeping it afloat with fluffy sales, our system will be viable enough to get a chance at the "hardcore" material.

The bad part is if the fluffy games are junk too, no one will keep it afloat. This is where Nintendo should step up as gatekeeper and disallow some games on their system. That's what they did with cartridge patents (which I actually don't support in general, but understand how it benefited Nintendo's profit margins in this usage).

Like I said before, labeling, which we all are tempted to do because it's easy, is a way of summing up a person to one thing and then easily dismissing them. Casual gamer indicates a person who doesn't really care about video games, esp. not the traditional games. It indicates a person who doesn't have a great appreciation or standing of the video game community. As soon as you put that label on someone, you're saying they don't have the expertise to continue the conversation with you, which is faulty reasoning. It's also a poor way of dictating what games are good and worthy of being played. Sims may not seem good to you, but someone, including some hardcore gamers, really love the game. (not me, so that's where my defense of them ends)

Fair enough. I wouldn't say that all of Nintendo's franchises are aimed at children, though. At least Zelda and Metroid, for example, are a bit too complex for children. The others I would think are more for all ages, where youngins can enjoy them while they can provide a challenge for gamers skillful enough and willing to devote more time to it (Mario games are a great example). I think that Nintendo should make a choice on games like Zelda and Metroid (some original IPs wouldn't hurt either) to design them purely with the older or "hardcore" gamer in mind. I hope you're right and they will address this in the future.

BTW I actually don't mind the Sims, but I also do not believe it to be a "hardcore" franchise.

http://www.gamernode.com/news/4939-iwata...index.html

either way it doesn't look like Nintendo would be doing this anytime soon.

That's a great little insight into Nintendo's thinking, even with marketing spin attached.

I can agree that Metroid was more adult, perhaps is all adult, but not Zelda. The original story was designed for kids, the game was beaten by kids. All the Zelda's afterwards have gotten prettier and the story has gotten more and more kid friendly. The gameplay, considering changes in both our ages (I'm assuming you're between 18 and 25, I'm dangerously close to 30) and in the various systems, has probably stayed the same, it only appears to have changed.

I will agree however that the originals all felt like and may very well be better games than their predecessors. I think this is because programmers were forced to work hard on gameplay since they couldn't rely on graphics and sound to sell the game. I'm terribly concerned about how I'm going to teach my little girl to play the graphically inferior games when she's old enough so that she'll have a greater appreciation of video games. Especially since I don't think the Atari 2600 will look too good on an HDTV.

So, I see the Wii as a possible reversion to a concentration on greater gameplay. Only time will tell if the video game industry has the talent to run with it. Wii Sports is a great demo of what CAN be done with control schemes...but I've yet to see a game actually use any of it.

Everyone's writing too much, I can't even concentrate on what's going on :S

i see the link to what Snake is saying... look at The Genesis/32X/CD and the Saturn... both were consouls owned by sega being supported at that time... pissed off the sega group to the point where they got sucked into Sony's camp