Whereas Nintendo creates high quality original software with new and functional controls, MS builds software after the fact for a chimera – the ‘casual gamer’. With a highly limited and touchy interface crippled by lag that is given genre copies of Nintendo software that (because of the interface) feature spotty at best controls, and 500 million dollars of marketing behind the pile to push.

They are the anti Nintendo.

And yet you call out Nintendo in this essay, and yet push and hype Kinect in other features for its ‘potential’?

How much money has MS lost on XBOX 360 – it is still in the billions of dollars, is it not? (But they have unlimited time to get back their ‘gaming investment’, which includes billions lost on XBOX 1, just as they had unlimited time to fix RRoD, and now have unlimited time to ‘improve’ Kinect.) They are a parasite to the game industry, look at who they negativly influenced Sony, a once proud, dominant, and profitable gaming brand reduced to severe loss of market share, loss of 3rd party exclusives, 4.5 billion in the red, and their just born portable arm now in life support.

It is lucky for all of us gamers that Nintendo is profitable and independent, and can continue to reinvent themselves, other wise we would lose innovative software and controls and instead receive bland generic-ware dream up by some MS consulting/advertising group – sickening.

Anyone who uses the words ‘core’ and ‘casual’ to describe gaming miss the point of gaming entirely – to be entertained by high quality games.

I also strongly disagree about core games only being focused on narrative, but then I guess it depends on how you define core games, which is something nobody’s ever likely to agree on!

Thanks for the comments and food for thought, though

You are crazy – and just jumping on the band wagon of the butt-hurt hardcore negative Nintendo campaign (see I can stereotype as well). I have been playing video games since the Atari 2600 and I have to say Brain Age is a fun well made game – I did not buy it cause I wanted to train my brain, I wanted to play an ORIGINAL game idea – heaven forbid?

The problem with core games is they car more about game narrative and less about gameplay and fun. They want games to tell a story (poorly, as gaming is ill suited for it) and they are threatened by any game that chooses not to tell a story. If you want dumbed down, watch some Sonic cut scenes, or Metroid Other M…

I don’t think Nintendo has dumbed down gaming AT ALL. To be honest, I think their “Ocean strategy” (or whatever it’s called) is working pretty well. It’s not like Brain Age is the only expanded audience game…

I’ve seen new gamers born thanks to HOW you control these new games. The DS is so simple to use. It uses a stylus, so adults are related to (and attracted to) it.

In my opinion, Nintendo has expanded the market not by creating Brain Age, but by making new user interfaces, ones we had never seen of and ones which are easy and intuitive.