In the great artificially inflated divide between "casual" Wii games and "hardcore" Wii games, it seems obvious that Super Mario Galaxy 2 will lean more toward the latter. But according to comments made by Shigeru Miyamoto to Nintendo Power (via G4tv.com), it sounds like it might be a slightly more pronounced lean than we might have expected. Miyamoto explained that while the game is being made to appeal to both veterans and newcomers, they designed it with the presumption that even newcomers will be better after having played the first Galaxy.
"I do believe that there is a lot here to appeal to the more veteran and more experienced gamers, and I think it's a title that they will obviously enjoy," said Miyamoto. "But I really took it into consideration and tried to do our best to create a game that's accessible to new gamers as well. And, you know, we also built it with consideration that we believe that people who played through the first Mario Galaxy have become better players."

It's an interesting assumption for Nintendo to make, considering so much of their strategy with the Wii so far has been built on the assumption that they're attracting new gamers without any prior experience at all. Still, it'll be interesting to see if the overall difficulty for Galaxy 2 is ratcheted up in any noticeable way -- especially since the first Galaxy seemed to strike the right balance between making the main content just tough enough for a healthy challenge, while making the optional content tougher for the more hardcore completionists.