While the implausible success of titles like Carnival Games and Let’s Imagine Babyz Quit Smoking Dogs and Hairstyle Experience would lead one to believe that casual games are easy sellers, Microsoft has declared that it is the so-called “hardcore” games that shift without difficulty, thanks to the fact that they sell themselves.
“The core are going to buy the games, we don’t have to focus on marketing those — well, we do, but those games in a lot of ways will sell themselves because they’re such immersive and intense experiences that the core is going to buy, and buy disproportionally for the Xbox,” says MS’ David Dennis.
“It’s a continuation of a strategy we’ve been articulating for a long time, which is that we have a powerful piece of hardware that enables a lot of different experiences. Let’s start with the core users to really get their attention and get them invested and committed to us as a platform. Then as we look to broaden to new audiences, we have the hardware capacity and technology innovation to continue to evolve the experience, whether that’s by bringing things like Facebook, Netflix and Twitter to give people more reasons to turn the console on, or with Natal in the future, with a more social, casual and interactive controller-free gaming experience that something like Natal brings.”
… And more marketing speak.
I certainly see what Dennis is saying — there is indeed a core fanbase that will always be following games and paying more attention to so-called “hardcore” games. That said, however, I don’t think Ubisoft’s litany of DS and Wii games are exactly struggling to find its huge target audience of retards.
