Bungie: We Carried Xbox 360

Optimus Wrote:


yep, just another victim to those huge exclusive titles on the PS2, or was it because of Halo ?

Optimus wrote


okay, if you say so. I seriously didnt know anyone had up to date sales figures on the console wars. But oh well. cant be right all the time.

I didn't knew either, but the nice chaps at NeoGaf seem to compile a lot of data on a yearly basis now and then and looking at it from a yearly basis (with montly sub-divisions) really puts a very different perspective on everything.

One remark on the NeoGaf compilathons, for Europe, they only have numbers for the biggest markets like Britain, Germany France and Spain.

Oh leave off the "pseudo-hardcore" bullshite, willya? FFS, anyone who buys a next gen Hi Def capable console is "pseudo-hardcore scraps"? As an aside, as near as I can tell, "hardcore gamer" was invented by marketing folks to describe what they used to just call "gamers", but who now had to be differentiated from the newly minted "casual gamers", a group whose own definition is fuzzy at best, fluid at worst. But now back to this "pseudo-hardcore" garbage you seem determined to spew.
...from my POV it looks like:
" "Real (hardcore) gamers" (A group of which I obviously consider myself a member) are playing the PC and Wii console, those 360 and PS3 owners are total poseurs (who I could totally pwn)"

I'm not even sure if "hardcore gamer" is something you aspire to be, or something you have to reluctantly admit to and blame on addictive personalities running on both sides of you family...

I think our first mistake is caring about the definition of a marketing term...no good comes from that.

I would say

Gamers (Hardcore) are Casual Gamers, Casual in the definition that they play games on a casual basis, its part of their casual lifestyle, an assumption is made that Hardcore gamer means you are the geek gamer the gamer who spends no less than every waking and non working hour playing games,

Marketing based Casual Gamers are couldnt give a s**t gamers, basically your Mum and Sister those who buy Horse riding games, those who look at a Wii and laugh because a pyshical motion directed to a graphical response causes them to giggle a bit and would only play the damn system because they had 2 glasses of Red with xmas dinner and a glass of sherry, the kind that has been recently pointed out to buy the most expensive board game, and its a current Fad a trend something that will die down and those "Casual Gamers" will become either non gamers again or actually become "Hardcore Gamers"

in 5 years time Nintendo will struggle, Those Casual Gamers still wont give a s**t about the Wii 2`s graphics in HD and moving a device at the screen will be wearing thin and your grans last glass of sherry will result in her playing DDR on the xbox 720 for the required annual giggle, she will still be baffled by iPods and the gift of a camera phone you give her will end up in the drawer within a couple of weeks, in fact i suspect more and more will move on to passing Netbooks around next xmas than Wii`s or DS`s.

The casual market holds no lure for us the GAMER and most of us already bore of the predictable now nintendo offerings of cyber dogs and virtual sports, we are craving our fix of 100 hour RPGS and ultra realistic driving simulations, we crave Mario and Zelda all the same but unitl Nintendo is going to offer it in a way we want to play it we wont be falling for their new consoles or revolutionary games and controllers, and i somehow think Nintendo have learnt a lesson and we will see a Wii 2 with a more hardcore offering with an optional Casual market offering and unfortunatly for us we will see MS and Sony fall into the trap of the `Casual` buyer by that time far far far too late.

a humble Casual Hardcore Gamers opinion.

Me, I'd want to have a somewhat inclusionary definition of "hardcore gamer" for everyone's delicate ego's sake, but one that would be dependant upon a definition of "casual gamer". Where a "hardcore gamer" would be any "gamer" who excludes himself from the "casual gamer" set for whatever reason, thereby including everyone who thinks they're hardcore...I don't think this will be a popular definition, because I think some are demonstrably more interested in an exclusionary definition of "hardcore gamer". So it wouldn't matter if you keep up with industry news, have every console, play tactical FPSes every waking hour, or RPGs for two hours every other day (more on the weekend). If you have a good reason not to be casual, you're 'core. full stop.

I'd also count the failure to include a component cable as an epic fail.

Naah, hard-core gamer is a rather old term, probably invented by gamers, picked up by the gaming press and then picked up by marketing, marketing is always behind, they can only observe what is allready happening minus a few strokes of geniuses. The recent "meaning" of hard-core however is crafted by a self-defense ivory tower reflex of (mostly american) gaming journalism.

Also, PreciousRoi is funny when he's mad, starts inventing all kinds of narrow-minded stuff people seem to be saying. Offcourse, more interesting is the question why...besides, half of what i say is complete bullshit anyways, the other half is the attempt of constructing a cultural scientific context with proper right wording and definitions since my master thesis for history is about videogames. But since no one ever bothered to even try to define anything game-related (well, except games then) you're going to have these kind of bumpy definition "talks".

A more possible all-inclusion way of looking at it is the entertainment pyramid. You have people who see games as popcorn, people who see games as a hobby, but only one of many, you have people who have games as their primary or only hobby and you have people who have games as a complete lifestyle (or major part of). The interesting bit about this pyramid is that even the lower level can perfectly be playing gears of war, but in a casual way.

The problem untill the beginning of this decade is that the gaming pyramid was quite narrow, now the lowest level is extremely broad thanks to major part of the DS and Wii. Part of Nintendo's strategy is to get those people to start broaden out the upper levels and pushing out the other competitors who are more and more relying on the upper levels of the pyramid. This does not exclude that those efforts can not reach the lower levels with the right marketing and perception-creation.

Another thing the pyramid implies is that this lowest level never dissapears, the mums and girls now buying ds's and stuff...sure you can call it a fad, but for the same money, it is there to stay if you market it well.

Also, i implied all over the forums that:
1) hard-core gamer is something you can only objectively define in time trough time spent doing gaming and meta-gaming activities. I just added to that that hardcore gamers are people who like games, all kinds of games, not afraid to try any kind of new game (unless, after expercience built up in a genre and they found out they do not like the genre, they can decline trying a game in the genre they don't like playing).
2) pseudo-hardcore gamer was a term i invented to piss of people...and this is the sneaky trick...who actually are pseudo-hardcore gamers. Only they will have troubles with that term and the meaning behind it. It's good to know where you actually stand PreciousRoi...really! Now the question is, why do you do it?

God, i would be a bad interviewer, explaining the real meaning behind elaborate questions and terms.