Master Malstrom,
But they don’t see gamers as universal! What they have done is that game developers see only two types of gamers. The first are ‘true gamers’ which translates to ‘people that like what I like’. The others are called ‘the wrong type of gamers’. These are gamers who don’t like what I like. The ‘wrong type of gamers’ are always given names from ‘casual gamers’ to ‘female gamers’ to ‘children gamers’ to ‘family gamers’.
I’m sure everyone realizes this, but this prejudice for the ‘wrong type of gamer’ is why third party companies didn’t want to make games for the Wii (the install base was there. Nintendo kept hearing: “Those people don’t want to buy the games I want to make.”). However, I’m not sure everyone realizes this, is that the Wii U is designed to only have the ‘right type of gamers’ so third party companies will make games for the installed base. Nintendo is collaborating with the prejudice.
The Wii was so popular because the entire system was inclusive for the ‘wrong type of gamers’ like your grandmother or people like me. Why make a console for the industry? The Game Industry is already on a course for certain destruction: their costs keep doing up and their cashflow keeps going down. You never saw any excitement going on in society over the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360. But with the Wii… oh yeah.