Rumor-ium: Wii killed the hardcore gamer… star.

There’s a new rumor running around the neighbor-net (which I sincerely hope is false) that says Nintendo’s Project H.A.M.M.E.R., the action title for the Wii, has been canceled.

And if that’s not bad enough, the main reason it was supposedly canceled was because Nintendo wants NST (Nintendo Software Technology) to develop “expanded audience” titles instead. And by that I’m sure they mean casual games geared towards non-gamers.

Dear God no.

In recent months, many people were worried that, with games like Nintendogs and Brain Age becoming amazingly huge hits, that the hardcore gaming sector would take a huge hit. I never thought it was ever really going to happen, as there are still a lot of games geared towards true gamers coming out in the next year or so, but this rumor has me worried. Although this is just one game, it can mean more. And with Nintendo usually being the trend setter on their own consoles, you can bet your sweet corn-hole that others may follow suit.

Think about it. Once something really big and successful happens in the business world, everyone flocks to it. That whole “blue ocean strategy” does indeed exist, but at some point, the financial horizon becomes what it always was: the red ocean, where scurvy-ridden financial pirates come to pillage everything that we hold dear.

The iPod created the mp3 craze, and now everyone has an mp3 player on the market. The DS is literally destroying Nintendo’s money vaults, and now we have games like Ubisoft’s My Life Coach coming around to add more fuel to the fire.

And with games like Wii Play still topping the charts in the US, companies are bound to take notice, thinking that casual games are what people want on Nintendo systems. Xbox 360 and PS3 may be the only bastion of hope for hardcore gamers if this attitude spreads any further.

Today we may say goodbye to Project H.A.M.M.E.R. (still waiting for confirmation from Nintendo, of course), but what about tomorrow? Will games like Metroid Prime and Disaster: Day of Crisis meet the same end?

[Via IGN]