One of the reasons why Sony was doing better than Nintendo some years ago was because they created a new market, Sony’s PS and PS2 and their games where aimed to entertain not only kids and youngsters but also young people from 20 until 30 years old. Nintendo focused on entertainment only for kids during some years, but with the DS and the Wii hey have created a new world, a new market. Now even 50 years old people are playing video games! And not only men but also women.
Look at the next charts, you can see the balance between men and women in Nintendo DS chart. Blue are men DS owners, pink are women, the x-axis represents age and Y the quantity of machines.
People with DS in Tokyo and Osaka. There are more 44 years old people with DS than 17 years old with DS! Isn’t it amazing?
Just to compare, look at the same data but for the old Game Boy Advance.
These charts are from japan.cnet.com. If you want more charts this is the one for the Wii and this one for the Game Cube where masculine predominance is obvious.
7 replies on “Videogames for everyone”
[…] gnome wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptNintendo focused on entertainment only for kids during some years, but with the DS and the Wii hey have created a new world, a new market. Now even 50 years old people is playing video games! And not only men but also women. … […]
Lol, the one that surprises me is the bar that shows people in their 70’s playing DS.
good stuff, a;; those who thought that Nintendo would have died like sega are being proven wrong
No surprise there. I’m a DS owner right now, imagine if they came up with a DS owner chart for the US, you would probably find most owners from 5-25.
AS: you are right, in the US there are not so many games for adults. Here in Japan half of DS’s software is aimed to the adult market.
True, I see a lot of ads on Japanese TV for adult level DS applications. Just a few weeks ago I saw a couple of Japanese girls at a Starbucks in LA use a DS to help translate their order.
I definitely see more girls playing DS lately. I even saw one playing Zelda the other day in my broadcasting class.