New Super Mario Bros Wii beats Modern Warfare 2

[elvis]

Why is this surprising?

"Hardcore" gamers are still the minority, just like they've always been. This isn't something new. For every Modern Warfare player there's 100 soccer mums playing Bejewelled. Just like 14 years ago for every Quake player there were 100 people playing Tetris.

The internet has made communications easier than they were, so hardcore gamers have now found larger communities. With that, they've made the false assumption that just because they talk to more people means that they're now somehow a larger group of people. That just simply isn't the case - they are just more aware of the size of the group now.

Just like when I was growing up, I knew maybe a dozen "hardcore" Street Fighter players, and I thought that was the edge of the earth. The Internet grows, and places like Shoryuken.com appear. Suddenly I find tens of thousands of fighting game fans - orders of magnitude more than I thought there would be in this day and age. Does that mean we're some sort of large player base? Hell no. Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort still slams fighting games for sales figures, because the casual market is and always will be bigger.

I didn't even raise an eyebrow when I saw news posted that NSMBW outsold MW2. It was obvious it would happen to anyone who has followed gaming trends over the last 30 years. Perhaps the only people surprised are this new generation of gamers who started life with an XBox or PS2, and didn't experience gaming before that era.

[RCBH928]

based on what elvis says, which I kind of agree on,
that probably means hardcore gaming is going to die.

Those companies are after money,
so why create a multi-million game which you risk to lose a lot on like Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect, when you create something like Mario Kart and NSMBW and will sell multiple times more?

I like more "hardcore" games over puzzle games, I am more into action/adventure stuff, though I don't mind seeing less of BioShock and GTA4 for something like Mario Galaxy and Boom Blox, but please, I don't want to see them die for Cooking MaMa and Carnival Games.

I know there are probably more people that can play Tetris than Quake, but the question is, they are NOT into videogames , how many will jump on board?

You really got those niche players that will always come back and they wanter bigger and stronger, your grandpa and your sister in law, its really hard to see them excited over a videogame, they probably are not willing to buy it, but your old school friend will probably play RE5 anytime any place with you.

I think what Ninendo did this generation is very much like this.
There are 1 million people that are willing to watch Football, and 9 million who are into theater.
Based on those statistics you will be promoting football for those 1 million people, thats what Sony and Microsoft is doing because those watching theater probably will never looking at football. But Nintendo made those theater watcher interested in football.

If you can do that in any business expect to be super rich. Just imagine
1) Make people who are into fashion watch basketball games
2) Turn tech guys into adventure travelers to mountains and African jungles
3) Turn politicians into comic/anime readers/watchers
You see what I mean?

[BAD PIXEL]

So if someone plays NSMBW for 10 hours everyday, are they considered a "hardcore" gamer?

[pepharytheworm]

All I have to say is I hate the term "hardcore gamer". Most of the people who think they are hardcore are not IMO. To me a hardcore gamer would like any type of game, any year, any system. Gaming started as a casual affair, a past time. I like games with story or without.

By the way who thought a Mario platformer would sell poorly or not in the multimillions, has any mario platformer not sold at least a couple million?

[Erik_Twice]

Calling yourself a "Hardcore gamer" is a new lingo for "I have a bigger penis than thou"

[Kemiroch]

Calling yourself a "Hardcore gamer" is a new lingo for "I have a bigger penis than thou"

Wow so .... I like NSMBW AND I'm a hardcore gamer? Good to know

[RCBH928]

I hate "hardcore gamer" phrase too
but its only phrase I know to distinguish between
RE games and carnival games

if it was up to me, hardcore gamer would be those who play games that are damn hard like Zelda(NES) and Ninjga Gaiden(NES) , and similar really tough games.

maybe "serious" gamer should be used for more advanced games like Mass Effect and Tekken

[elvis]

that probably means hardcore gaming is going to die.

Nah, I don't think so.

"Hardcore" (yes, a very stupid term) gaming has found different shapes and forms over the years. In the late 70's it was Space Invaders, in the 80's it was just about anything, in the 90's it was Street Fighter, in the 00's it was FPS and now it's any third person adventure/shooter with a cover system.

You're argument is "big companies won't support the hardcore market because there are no profits", and that's not true. There are profits to be made out of all market segments, not just the big ones. My favourite shmup dev, Cave, are still pumping out arcade shooters despite the fact that they only sell around 20K copies when they port them to consoles. It might not be a hugely lucrative market, but it's their niche and they do it well.

Likewise we're seeing a massive resurgence in indie gaming (both eastern "doujin" and western devs too) not seen since the early days of home computing (and by that I mean pre-PC, with hardware like the Spectrums, C64s and Amigas of this world). It's clear these people are not all targeting the masses with some very specific titles coming through (yes, there's plenty of "casual gamer" stuff, but not all of it).

I don't think "Hardcore" gaming will die any time soon. Trends come and trends go. There's not going to be any great apocalypse despite what people want to hype up. We're still gaming today even though the great arcade crash of '83 had everyone predicting gaming was going to die within 2 years.

Keep calm and carry on.

[Betamax001]

Going back to the original posts, did the 6 Million sales figure for COD mean worldwide, or just the United States? Because i thought Kotaku that said that NSMBW sold 10 million worldwide. And on the Wiki link, it says that COD made over $1 Billion of sales as of Jan 18.

[ZeroAX]

Going back to the original posts, did the 6 Million sales figure for COD mean worldwide, or just the United States? Because i thought Kotaku that said that NSMBW sold 10 million worldwide. And on the Wiki link, it says that COD made over $1 Billion of sales as of Jan 18.

well to tell the truth super mario sells in every single country of the world. cod sells in the US and UK. it might have sold in Germany as well if they supported dedicated servers on the pc, but by giving pc gamers the middle finger, I don't think that's likely.