This is gonna be a multi-part series of articles discussing the status of the industry as a whole. Enjoy.

Part I: How Wii Fit is good for the industry.
You take a good look at the industry right now, and you probably scoff at games like Wii Sports, or Wii Fit, if you're a core gamer. OK, let's backpeddle for a bit, and define core gamer. A core gamer in this sense, is basically you & I (if you're reading this). Someone who buys games like Halo, or Guild Wars, or World of Warcraft, or F.E.A.R., or whatever. You're probably 16-24 yo, and male. You also like to get drunk and stay up all night playing Halo on X-Box live and cry yourself to sleep when a 12 year old kid completely dominates you. Or not, but you know...

Anyways, you scoff at games like Wii Fit and Wii Sports and these other "casual" games, not just because they're kiddy but because they're almost (Mostly, wii fit) non-games. You probably consider such things "embarassments" to the game industry, that show how the game industry will die because of them.

Who cares about casual games, or gamers, you think? You look at the sales numbers of games now-and-days, and everything seems to be running nicely. Yet, the problem is that while the numbers are big, they aren't quite big enough all the time.

Even 2 million units sold isn't quite enough, actually. Not every game is GTA4 and sells 3.6 million units on its first day. Wii Fit is just now getting to 2 million world wide, and it's been out since December 1st in Japan. Ouch.

Yet, this is something Miyamoto was expecting. Is it because Wii Fit is a bad game? Not really. Unlike a core gamer, a casual gamer generally doesn't buy something on the spot. They gauge reactions of other people, read reviews, wait for price drops, and make smarter purchases. Unlike you & I, they don't go down the isle and see idk Crysis and instinctively can guess if its going to be good or not. They don't impulse buy...ever. In fact, a lot of games now-and-days sold for core gamers, see a huge buy rate the first couple days, and then very little afterwards.

Wii Fit is a good example of the opposite. There was maybe a quarter of a million sales the first few days, but a ton more afterwards. It's drawing in more casual gamers.

Ahhh, back to that. Who cares about em?

The game industry, from the outside anyways, looks to be healthy. Yet, it really isn't. If I had to guess, probably ~50% of all games made and sold, don't come close in sales revenue to make up for the money invested in making the game, and they probably never back all that money until somewhere down the road. This creates a sense of limited creativity. A lot of game companies, obviously, aren't EA or Activision Blizzard, companies that rake in a billion + dollars of revenue a year. Companies are frail, as is the industry. Is it really worth investing millions of dollars into making this innovative original game? If it fails, you're fucked. It becomes a gamble, a gamble that these companies of tons of people become more and more scared of taking as time goes on.

Wii Fit, for all intents and purposes, is the start of saving the industry. Casual gamers are what is going to save the industry. From what, you probably ask? Crumbling beneath its own weight, that is what. Casual gamers are the future of the industry, and they are going to keep it healthy, and long lasting, because while you & I go and buy games willy nilly and get disappointed and more and more jaded and probably start ignoring all the original innovative games cause FUCK YOU it isn't Metal Gear Solid 6: This Game Series is still going for the PlayStation 8, these guys are going to buy all the cool innovative stuff and not pass it up, because casual gamers seem to see something that a lot of core gamers don't, which is the "game" part of video games.

Go look at Patapon, and go look up trailers and gameplay vids for it now. It's a really good game, pretty innovative too, but I bet you 50$ a ton of core gamers just bypassed it without any thought. Why? Not because it's a bad game, but because it's not really marketed for the core gamer. It's not grown up enough. It's not a sure fire sale, maybe you'll buy this game and it'll suck. You go out there, and buy Call of Duty 4, and you know it's most likely going to be a good game, because hey, it's Call of Duty. Casual gamers don't really care about this. They see games like fl0w, or Patapon, or Wii Fit and (after considerable thought) buy the game because of the experience it offers. These games provide unique experiences from each other, and that's something they offer over everything else.

And ultimately, the casual gamer is going to play Wii Fit, or fl0w, or whatever, and if they enjoy it, or even remotely had a good amount of fun, they'll go buy more games, and eventually this is going to lead to not only more money coming from core games (that casual gamers may eventually pick up), but it's going to lead to more money in general. I guarantee you Wii Fit cost very little to make compared to most games! Most games targeted towards casual gamers are very "cheap" to produce, and that doesn't mean the quality is bad, it just means it's not so much about the video, as it is about the game.

One thing is for certain, however, is that if the Industry keeps going the way it is going right now, it is going to die. Maybe not this generation of consoles, or the next, or the next, but eventually. There's not enough money going in to keep companies stabilized enough to take that risk of making that original awesome innovative game. Casual gamers are the way to fix the cracks in a slowly crumbling building, and the way to prevent the game industry from getting as low as the music industry is right now, for example.

I for one, do not want to be forced to choose between BioShock 6, Call of Duty 14, Halo 7, or KillZone 4 just because companies are too scared to make games like Dark Sector or Mirror's Edge. I am glad that Nintendo (and to a minor degree, Sony and Microsoft) are starting to realize that casual gamers are where the real money is at, (well, not at, but will be) and are taking steps to heal the industry as a whole.

What are your thoughts? Think Wii Fit sucks and casual gamers suck and are ruining the industry, or that the more the merrier, eh?