Trilarion has a point. I was once told that the game development field is saturated. Computer games have existed for close to 40 years now if you count everything back to the Atari. Depending on a person's perspective, nothing can truly be "new", "fresh", or anything like that. Not anymore, at least.

I think you hit on a good point there. These things are advertised as innovations, but the developers themselves generally don't make these claims. To a marketer, everything is an innovation and they aren't doing their job if such a claim isn't made. Ask any developer and they will tell you they make games because they want to emulate all the things they loved about games in the past.

Innovation means NEW AND IMPROVED but obviously to marketing teams in means just another pile of bug ridden shit (yes I'm looking at BETHSOFT HERE!!)

Zelda didn't sell particularly well because it's on the Wii and it's not a casual game. The kind of people who'd play Zelda are the people who'd use a 360, PS3 or PC for gaming, and as you're no doubt aware, most folks can't justify buying a new console and peripheral just to play one game.

It's the same reason Monster Hunter didn't do well in the west. You just can't sell core games on the Wii.

Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate for WiiU is going to be better with voice chat, and HD and more

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wkQGEpRgL0

Well, I was going for the oxmoron approach - how can something be NEW and IMPROVED at the same time?

Only a very young person would make such a comment. By your definition of 'casual', then every arcade game and games that use arcade gameplay of the console games of the 80s and early 90s are all 'casual'. But I can tell you those games are harder than your so-called 'core' games of today. They took far more skill.

Besides, Twilight Princess sold very well in the West but bombed in Japan. Just as NSMB totally outsold the 3d Mario games, I suspect a more traditional Zelda would outsell the modern Zelda games.

Also, keep in mind that the core market is in massive decline right now on consoles.

Yeah, and? I do hope you're not assuming that I think casual games are an inherently bad thing. All I'm saying is that casual and core gamers are both separate markets when it comes to what games they want, which is why certain games such as Skyward Sword and Monster Hunter sold badly due to their platform. Because the games are aimed at one particular market whereas the console is strongly geared towards the other.
It sure is. We're rather overdue for a new console cycle, and as it turns out, core gamers would rather not play games on seven year old hardware if at all possible.

"Core gaming" is so popular that it caused the Gamecube to be the best selling game console. Which is why the PS2 audience all went for the PS3 and Xbox 360 to make those the best selling consoles of the generation.

Probably. And I'm also hoping for a Zelda old school and challenging. Just like they used to be. I think it will happen eventually on a Nintendo handheld.

Concerning Zelda DS, they should stop trying to seduce as many audiences as possible, because by doing so, they end up making soulless games like The Phantom Hourglass that target everybody and nobody at the same time.

Innovation is overrated. People have made it abundantly clear what they want by how they spend their money. I personally am not a fan of the CoD series. I think that it is the same game over and over. I could complain about innovation in that series until I'm blue in the face, but why should they "innovate" that game when they sell millions of copies in the first week of each games' release.

I have to say though, Spirit Tracks fixed pretty much all of Phantom Hourglass's worst flaws.

And looking at many of the Kickstarter projects they want to bring back the good old games feeling in a modern outfit. Basically not very innovative.

And then there are the extremely innovative Kickstarter projects like the space lift....

People are overrated.