And who says that it's impossible for somebody to own and enjoy more than one console? I have a 360 and a Wii and enjoy both. I'm pretty sure I am what most people would consider a hardcore gamer, because even though I don't spend all my time on competitive multiplayer I do buy a lot of games and spend a lot of time reading information about games. If you only owned a Wii, then yes, you'd be missing out on a lot of great core gamer fare. If that's a problem to you, then get a 360 or a PS3 and have fun with that too.
Furthermore, as far as hardcore vs. casual goes, not only is quantifying how 'hardcore' of a gamer you are childish and irrelevant, there's nothing wrong with casual games in themselves. Pick-up-and-play games are great as long as they're well designed. For example, look at Puzzle Quest. On a fundamental level, it's a very casual game; it's essentially Bejeweled, and the matches don't usually go longer than 5-10 minutes apiece. However, it's also addictive, can be played for long periods of time if the person so desires, and has an added layer of depth for those people who want to go deeper into it. Look at a lot of the PopCap stuff, such as Peggle or Heavy Weapon or any of the other fantastically designed casual games they make. I think the reason most people associate 'casual' games with lower quality is because the target consumers are inherently less discerning and more willing to pay for poorly designed games because they don't know any better. But that shouldn't reflect poorly on the design philosophy. When casual games are done correctly they are as viable from an entertainment standpoint as any other type of game.
And as far as Zelda and Mario games go, I think Nintendo gets away with making very incremental changes because A) they put an absurd amount of time into polishing their games, and B) people don't mind playing a similar game if the last one in the series came out 2 or 3 years before. It's not like EA's sports games, where they're asking you to pay 60 dollars for a game every 12 months that's essentially the same as the year before. Or Rachet and Clank, where Going Commando and Up Your Arsenal were essentially the same game with different menus. Sure, Twilight Princess was basically a second Ocarina of Time, but Ocarina of Time came out in 1998. I personally played through Twilight Princess and thought it was great. Was it as amazing as it was the first time around? No, but I enjoyed it. And to be honest, the adjustment of a Gamecube game to Wii controls and the great control scheme of Phantom Hourglass just makes me more excited for what the first Zelda game designed specifically for the Wii will be like. Furthermore, the last 3D Mario adventure was Super Mario 64. Not only did that come out in 1996, but it basically defined everything that a 3-D platformer should aspire to be. So if you're saying to me, 'this game is too much like a game that came out 11 years ago', when Super Mario 64 not only pioneered the genre, but also when Super Mario Galaxy is adding in physics- and perspective-based gameplay to an extent never seen in a platformer, not to mention a tremendous amount of colorful art design, imagination, and environmental diversity, then try to understand why I think you're impossible to please. I'll take Super Mario Galaxy and all of its similarities to Super Mario 64 over another brown-tinged, bloom-lighting infused sci-fi FPS any day.
And that's another issue I have with gaming in general: specifically, when did the gaming community become so totally fucking jaded? I'm not targeting ScrambledGregs in particular (if you feel that way, I apologize because it wasn't my intention), but it just seems to me after reading a lot of video game websites that people just can't get excited about anything anymore. Every time there's a preview of a game I always read people commenting about how they don't like it because the character designs are lame or they don't like the environments or (a statement that probably infuriates me more than any other) because it doesn't have online multiplayer. Even in the weeks leading up to Bioshock's release, a game I loved to death despite some minor flaws, I saw people saying that it was a rental because it didn't have an online mode. Even though the game was injected what I considered to be much-needed boosts into the environments and narratives of the FPS genre, some people just managed to find tiny things about the game to hate. Of course, I'm not saying everyone needs to agree with my opinions on games, but man, would it hurt people to reserve judgement until the game hits shelves, for crying out loud? The sort of hallmark experience for me in this regard was the Kotaku comments on the Too Human trailer that was released a few weeks ago. It's a game from a developer with a fantastic track record, and its gameplay is Diablo meets God of War, and its setting is Norse myth in a sci-fi universe. Everything about that game got me excited, and I thought the trailer looked great as well, but as soon as I checked the comments I saw 90% of the people taking an enormous shit on the effort Silicon Knights made even though it was clear that most people didn't know anything about how the game was supposed to work. It's frustrating as hell.
And finally, I'd like to reiterate from my last post that we as gamers shouldn't care what Nintendo's 'holiday lineup' is like. The only people who should care about what games are hitting in what quarter are the executives running the publishers and the investors in those publishers. If Nintendo had rushed out all of their Wii games in the holiday window (which, knowing Nintendo's habit of being extremely careful with their first party properties, we all should have known was never going to happen), then people would just be complaining in spring about a 'drought'. As I said before, regardless of where the money comes from, Nintendo is doing absolutely fine financially, so it doesn't hurt us as gamers to have Super Smash Brothers in development another couple of months to make sure it's perfect when it ships, and it will still sell just as well as it would if it had come out in the middle of November. The original Knights of the Old Republic came out in July, the traditional graveyard of game releases, and it was one of the biggest commercial successes of the original Xbox.
And I'm done ranting for now.
EDIT: And of course Ozy summarizes it perfectly in 6 sentences while I typed out that behemoth. Fantastic.
