Yes! Now we are getting somewhere. Both arguments you bring up are very good. And sorry for misunderstanding your earlier post.Shaheed79 said:I'm not sure you understood what I was trying to say. The Madden userbase always took a few years to transfer to the next generations lead console and I was simply stating that since the Wii is this generations lead console (which means mostly casual and new gamers which was what the PS2 had and the PS1 before it) then it would be a few years before we saw the same number of Madden fans on the wii than the HD consoles which have a much higher percentage of core gamers.
There are differences between the Wii and PS2 differences just like there were differences between the PSX and Super NES userbase and differences between the PS2 and PSX userbase. The newer lead console always seem to drastically expand the gaming market. I would argue the new markets that the Wii is reaching out to is no more different than the new markets that the Sony consoles reached out too. The Wii just took the next logical step in expanding the market with the only difference between the Wii is a pure games machine.
I'll address the 2nd one first. You are perfectly right when you say the userbases for different market leaders are different from each other. Obviously the overwhelming majority of fans of Nintendo 1st party games stayed with the N64 and Gamecube. But I guess the crux of my argument lies in my belief that the Wii is doing this to a much larger degree. The difference between the SNES and PS1 userbase is smaller than the difference between the PS2 and Wii userbase. I say this for two reasons.
1) The Wii is the fastest selling console in history. A big reason for this is that it's appealing to a newer demographic. This newer demographic obviously has different software preferences than most seasoned video game players.
2) A significant portion of the PS2 userbase has transitioned to the 360. I suppose this just my personal belief so I can't blame you for disagreeing. I just think that there is something to be said for the fact that the 360 lands more games in the top spots of the NPD charts than any other recent 2nd place console. Whether or not this is a good thing is debatable. Like you said, 360 sales tend to be very front-loaded and fizzle off while Wii software usually has amazing legs. But going back to the example of Madden (and this is where I address your first point), don't the 360 sales show that the majority of last gen Madden players already have transitioned to this gen?
I find the "Wii is not a traditional gaming machine" argument just as absurd as you do. But the mere fact that the argument exists is enough proof that this generation is very different. My entire point is that we cannot apply the logic of last gen to this one (e.g. Wii is this generation's PS2, developers should treat it as such). Giving the Wii the same level of support as PS2 will certainly help, but the situation is not perfectly applicable in this specific generation of consoles.