I have been thinking about this the last week. The Wii U obviously needs 3 big improvements over the Wii, lots of power, third party support, and great online. However, even if Nintendo were to solve all three of these problems and went above and beyond to make their system high quality in every way, would it still not attract the supposed "hardcore" gamers? Having talked with some of these people, the hatred and dismissal of Nintendo runs pretty deep. Nintendo has been painted by many gamers as not a a "real systems", "too family friendly", "a toy", "not mature", etc. If Wii U is going to everything right or even most things right would the long held view of Nintendo ultimately prevent the "hardcore" gamers to not buy the Wii U anyway? I am just wondering because many of "hardcore" gamers have very strong feelings against Nintendo as "lame" and "not cool".

Is the Wii U out? Until then I don't think we can even begin to make these assumptions.

Restated for emphasis.

The people you've been speaking to sound extremely ignorant and don't sound like the sort of gamers that deserve to be called 'hardcore gamers' at all. Unless, the definition of 'hardcore gamers' is whiny idiots that base many of their purchases on the age rating of a game and only buy games with lower age ratings if they're one of those annual sports games.

I think you just stole one of Nintendo Life's future talking point features.

No such thing as a 'hardcore gamer'.

I wouldn't say it's doomed per se, though I think Nintendo has a challenge to move beyond the Cool Spot "casual" stigma associated with it by the "hardcore." The hardcore already either have a PS3, 360, or PC so Nintendo is not going to win this demographic over by just being another outlet to play the same game on. Nintendo will have to show something unique and fun in the crowded video game market that makes the third party games different (like we we have heard so far about Darksiders II) along with some truly awesome, must-have, magical first party titles that are also very well marketed.

I think hardcore is a fancy way of saying dedicated.

Pretty much.

'hardcore' is one of those words that has a different definition every time you ask someone what it means.

That said, this is an impossible question to answer, because no one really knows, and we won't know until the system hits and we start seeing numbers.