You fail to recognize other glaring problems with the Kinect, such as the space require and inaccurate technology, to act as if "casual" gamers won't get upset when their technology isn't working as advertised is fairly absurd.
You talk about new IPs and how hardcore gamers don't trust them. You've made a comparison between Kane & Lynch 2 and Enslaved without taking into account the advertising budget of each game. There were K&L2 commercials running on TV near non-stop for awhile there.
You also fail to acknowledge the thriving indie game market on XBLA and PC: no names are more unknown and no studio as unproven as these. Games like Minecraft and Super Meat Boy have outsold many established franchises.
I won't touch your point on the DS, mainly because I think the handheld market is a mess and would require more time than I care to spend merely to scratch the surface of.
That being said, on the note of piracy, it's only a matter of time before casual gamers realize they can do it. You draw a parallel between being tech savvy and piracy, which might have been truth a decade ago when you had to dig through crack sites, manage boot discs, pirate networks were untrustworthy, etc but that's not so much the case these days. I know plenty of "soccer moms" that are torrenting new release movies everyday and burning them for their kids, and their friends' kids, and their sister in Ohio who doesn't have the time to get to the movies because she's so busy with work.
I, and many other hardcore gamers, hate on Farmville, again, because history tells us to. I've played this sort of game. I had over two years invested in Ikariam, way too much time in Heroes of Gaia, and a few various other Farmville-esc web-based games. Like many I got involved in these because I thought they would be good distractions when I couldn't play real games. What I learned is that they barely even constitute being called a game, they've got far more in common with those nanopets, or whatever they were called, which were oh so popular in the mid-90s (and look at how well those stuck around...).
Essentially what you're doing is just sitting back and watching a plant grow. Sure, every so often you have to water the plant, maybe rotate it to change its orientation to the sun, so you can claim it's interactive, but really, it's not. Farmville and other browser games don't require skill, thought, or most importantly, playing. They simply require being tended to. This on its own would only take several minute a day, like watering plants. However, you log-on to upgrade your walls and before you know it an in-game friend gets a hold of you and your stuck for hours having a conversation while you fiddle around looking at your farm, castle, army, or whatever to give you a sense of gaming.
As for these games being free, sure, they are... but some poor sap is paying for them.
As for hardcore gamers paying $60 for games, well... depends who you are, I'm a big Steam/Impulse user myself so I can't say that I often spend $60 for games.
Many, if not most, of us were casual gamers at one point or another, the thing with being a casual gamer is you either get bored and move on, be it to more hardcore titles or leaving gaming all together. Who didn't love rail-shooters with light guns when they were younger? How many of those people have since made the natural transition to FPS, and now mock motion controllers?
How many people, of all demographics, have dusty Wiis?
Moreover, the casual market has, and will again, encounter the same problem as the music game market. Once you own one or two games, there's no need to buy more; there's really no need to have two dance games, or two games Olympic event style games, etc etc.
Casuals, likely, are buying maybe a handful of games (and that's being generous) for their first year or two of owning a system, and then not buying any more. Hardcore gamers on the other hand buy up to dozens of titles a year.
So, does that mean casuals are smarter because they are spending less and then moving on? No, not at all. Does it mean hardcore gamers are any better because they spend more? No. What it means is that the two are different audiences and it's silly to say one wants to be the other. Both are just doing what they enjoy. What pisses me right the fuck off, is when people look at the recent surge in casual gaming and think its going to grow until it inevitably replaces hardcore gaming; it's not, it will plateau -- possibly disappear --, and both side with have distinct audiences.
