I think both you and Wright have a point. There is certainly a correlation between popularity and quality, and works that are of high caliber will naturally appeal to many people.

On the other hand, I think you’ll agree that there’s a lot of popular tripe as well — Dan Brown’s interminable series of thriller novels comes to mind for me, and everyone seems to have a pop artist they love to hate. In other words, being popular is not in and of itself a mark of quality.

Of course, the inverse is also true; unpopularity is not necessarily an indication of poor quality. To continue the analogy, Ulysses is a famously inacessible novel, and not widely read outside outside of the literary community, but it’s also considered one of the finest works of literature in the English language. In video game terms, we might call it a “hardcore” book. :)

Anyway, I think there’s space for accessible games with broad appeal as well as less accessible, perhaps less popular games. My hope is that Nintendo, and companies like it, will not fall back on only producing the former type; and I think their recognition of the need for “bridge” titles is a good sign for the continuation of both.