Don’t let the wild success of Sega’s Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games fool you — the developer/publisher is still very much aware of the so-called “hardcore sect.”
Sega of America president Simon Jeffery said as much this week. He thinks western developers would be foolish to ignore the hardcore gamers on the Wii as they instead flood the market with casual fare that appeal to a wider demographic. “There’s no reason why [hardcore gamers] should be excluded or excommunicated from the Nintendo world,” he said.
First of all, Sega talking nice about Nintendo still feels wildly ironic to me, but that’s just my 80’s and 90’s blood talking. Second, he might be partially right, but personally I still believe in the shovelware theory addressed on Infendo this week. Crappy, casual games or whatever don’t keep people from buying more mature games, just as it is in the DVD section of Best Buy. Again, please see the DS library and sales figures to further bolster this theory.
That said, does anyone out there feel slightly less hostile today toward Nintendo’s current strategy than they did last year? Or, are you the type of gamer that feels more angst toward Nintendo today than you did six months ago? Why?