Wicky_42 said:
[Oops, early post, my bad]
You make some good points, and I'm sure that publishers are eyeing the Wii's success with envy. The expansion of motion controls to their systems of choice is obviously going to make them happier as they'll feel that now they can get a slice of the casual pie as well.
However, none of that opens the market up for a console from a new player (one of the points I was addressing). What it does open up is for the Wii 2 to be comfortably more powerful than either of the others' consoles and to have the support of the largest market share. Nintendo's had the time an opportunity to learn and improve from their motion control experience, so their second iteration has even more potential than Sony and Microsoft's first goes.
This may have been Nintendo's aim all along - this article [http://malstrom.50webs.com/birdman.html] makes for some interesting reading.
Thanks for that link, though it was a long one I wanted to read it all before I replied.
malestrom has made a masterful point, that the name "casual" is just an inaccurate euphemism* for a well understood aspect of marketing known for decades: the continuous trend from "downmarket" to "upmarket".
Casual =/= passionless
Casual = more downmarket = more accessible, appeal to wider audience,
I will be more careful to call games out as downmarket or upmarket and key here is recognising these are not discrete categories but part of a continuous spectrum (More or less up-or-down-market).
He apparently wrote the article in 2008, but Move and Kinect perfectly fit with his predictions, that Sony/Microsoft are starting upmarket and working their way downmarket.
Malestrom makes many really interesting points:
-that what we call "casual" today was the bread-and-butter of gaming in the past, how console gaming's natural progression has moved it upmarket
-Pre-Wii (early as 2003) the biggest "casual" market was flash based websites, on Web-browsers, on PC. And it was BIG and is still big with Farmville being the most insidious today. "casual" is not a new phenomenon, it has always been there, not silent, just ignored because it was on the unusual web-based ad-funded model.
So where does this leave us, the gamers, with Microsoft's Kinect, and Sony's Move, and E3 2010, with not even a hint of a new generation of consoles. I'm starting to realise how profound what Nintendo's strategy is, how it could change EVERYTHING and be as significant as 1982.
Let me say, that link leads to a long ass article but PEOPLE MUST READ IT!!!
My god, it's like Soylent green is people, I am legend, rosebud was his sled, he was Kyzer Soze... Nintendo isn't "pulling a casual"... THEY ARE USING A DISRUPTIVE STRATEGY!! The oldest trick in the book, they're breaking the rules to make their own.
In a nutshell, Malestom suggest that Nintendo has the strategy of starting downmarket, appeal to EVERYONE, key thing is NOT to have advanced graphics, not to intimidate them.
Step1: Gateway games: the detested Wii Fit and such like, these you can sell to anyone and get them "hooked" like a gateway drug
Step2: Bridge games: different from gateway games, these are for people who are hooked to move them upstream to more advanced games like Mario Kart Wii... I mean that fucking wheel... my god, the evil genius of it, it's beginning to sink in!
Step 3: cripple with an upmarket surge, with Zelda: Skyward Sword and 3DS
Step 4: A new more powerful Home console, building on their new audience, deliver the coup de grace
Result: All gasp in awe as Nintendo dominates so badly we all wonder what happened.
Basically, Sony and Microsoft are fucked - or their console gaming division at least. Nintendo has a plan and it is foolproof, not even these new motion peripherals will change that (Where will PC gaming fit into this? It has survived this far?)
Because all they are doing is thinking like the "birdmen" who thought they could fly if they just stuck bird's feathers on their arms and flapped real hard, they are just copying what birds appear to have, not the actual dynamics of flight. The analogy from Professor Christensen; "Innovator?s Dilemma".
I repeat: READ THIS ARTICLE PEOPLE!
http://malstrom.50webs.com/birdman.html
first paragraph:
Centuries ago, men attempted to fly by putting wings on their arms and flapping really hard. Logically, in their minds, it should have worked. Birds fly. Birds have wings. Therefore, having wings should mean man will fly.
The gentlemen, puffed with pride, failed every time. Had they examined the nature of flight, as opposed to the nature of birds, they would have realized the concept of lift (as Bernoulli did). One must examine the physics of the flight rather than putting feathers on one?s arms in imitation of birds. The descendants of these birdmen are with us today. In the gaming industry, they represent some of the highest gaming executives and esteemed analysts.
Nintendo is flying high. Rather than examine the nature of this flight, the birdmen are mesmerized by the feathers. The analysts and executives do not see the concepts of disruption and don?t even understand the Blue Ocean principles (though they think they do). The feathers they see on Nintendo?s ascent are casual games. Therefore, they surmise, if they make casual games then they will be flying high with Nintendo...
(I hope 
