"I never did understand why Nintendo insists on chasing after the uninterested casual gamers."
Because those casual gamers are the only reason that Nintendo "has more money than god" at all. The Nintendo 64 and Gamecube were both relative commercial failures and taught Nintendo the important lesson that their hardcore fanbase was not large enough to sustain their console business. So they designed the Wii to attract both lapsed gamers who stopped playing after the NES/SNES days and new players who were too intimidated by modern game design. AND IT WORKED! Nintendo made bank off of the Wii.
But ironically, it wasn't the casual gamers that abandoned Nintendo, it was Nintendo that abandoned the casual gamers. The biggest casual sellers on Wii (Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Wii Party, New Super Mario Bros. Wii) were given cheap, half-hearted sequels on Wii U whereas all the money and advertising went to the Gamecube sequels that casual gamers weren't interested in to begin with. It was really no surprise that the Wii U sold as badly as it did; it was targeted at the old hardcore audience that had already proven to be unable to sustain a console business.
Three times now, Nintendo have banked on the same core series (3D Mario, 3D Zelda, Mario Kart, Smash Bros.) to sell consoles and each attempt has resulted in increased failure. If the NX lineup revealed later this year turns out to be just more of these games again, then the NX is pretty well doomed. People buy video game consoles to play video games. If people don't want the games, they're not going to buy the console.
"I never did understand why Nintendo insists on chasing after the uninterested casual gamers."
Because those casual gamers are the only reason that Nintendo "has more money than god" at all. The Nintendo 64 and Gamecube were both relative commercial failures and taught Nintendo the important lesson that their hardcore fanbase was not large enough to sustain their console business. So they designed the Wii to attract both lapsed gamers who stopped playing after the NES/SNES days and new players who were too intimidated by modern game design. AND IT WORKED! Nintendo made bank off of the Wii.
But ironically, it wasn't the casual gamers that abandoned Nintendo, it was Nintendo that abandoned the casual gamers. The biggest casual sellers on Wii (Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Wii Party, New Super Mario Bros. Wii) were given cheap, half-hearted sequels on Wii U whereas all the money and advertising went to the Gamecube sequels that casual gamers weren't interested in to begin with. It was really no surprise that the Wii U sold as badly as it did; it was targeted at the old hardcore audience that had already proven to be unable to sustain a console business.
Three times now, Nintendo have banked on the same core series (3D Mario, 3D Zelda, Mario Kart, Smash Bros.) to sell consoles and each attempt has resulted in increased failure. If the NX lineup revealed later this year turns out to be just more of these games again, then the NX is pretty well doomed. People buy video game consoles to play video games. If people don't want the games, they're not going to buy the console.