The only reason why Infinity Ward is claiming that CoD players are not hardcore is because they want as many people as possible to buy the game. If you claim that your game is for hardcore players only, this will alienate casual players. Basically, Infinity Ward are rattled by the success of GTAV, and want to appeal to more casual gamers since maybe according to their thinking, hardcore gamers have become the slaves of GTAV (lol).
I myself don't play GTAV and probably I'm not going to play CoD: Ghosts or BF4. I'm older now and I stick to counter-strike GO for the PC and I'm trying out some unusual games like Beyond2Souls for the PS3 (maybe I can finally get a platinum trophy).
It is sad to see how gaming has become all about money, GTAV gets billions in revenue, and now Infinity Ward are jealous and are going to try to...get trillions in revenue? lol Somewhere somehow these large gaming companies have lost sight of making innovative games that consumers can enjoy...instead they rehash the same thing year after year...where's the innovation from these guys, isn't the CoD graphics engine the same one that was used in CoD 4: Modern Warfare (in year 2007)?