In my opinion game developers are neglecting the audience upon which this industry was built. Gamers like myself, who are now grown up with careers, families and other responsibilities simply no longer have the time to battle their way through 40 hours of game play to save the world. Even finding blocks of time to get through the next level of a game are hard to come by when your toddler is running around and you've had to bring work home to prepare a draft for your boss to review.

It seems that games for "hardcore" gamers make the assumption that you have large blocks of time to sit in front of a console. So-called "casual" games can be entertaining for short periods of time, but that's not why I play video games. I want the presentation, the action, the experience of a "big" game. Gamers like myself don't want casual games, we want that hardcore gaming experience redesigned to reflect the way we live.

I'm sure most of the staff on our humble site would agree with the above statement, we're all gamers with a 9-5 job. Once you get out of education and into "the real world" you'll find it harder and harder to find time for extended gaming sessions.

It remains easy to find time for shorter stints, but this often causes problems when trying to remember where the hell you are and what you need to do next in games like Zelda.

However, it seems Nintendo are the only company that has any games that fit this particular problem. Take Super Mario Galaxy for example, that's a AAA title, the game is split into 120 stars not all of which are required to complete the game, each star, or level, is split into a nice bitesize chunk of action and after every star, a save point. Perfect for the "hardcasual" gamer.

[source blog.newsweek.com]