Shock, oh SEE THIS SHOCK HERE -

[kyburg]

Japanese women have overtaken their male counterparts to become the biggest users of Nintendo’s Wii and DS machines in a seismic shift that the company said would “transform the video games industry”.

..

Many could now be forced to make dramatic alterations to their entire software development plans and advertising strategies.

Ya think?

The reasoning concerns me, yanno.

"Already Nintendo itself has pitched its Christmas offerings for this year at what is likely to be a predominantly female audience.

Wii Fit, which uses an innovative floor-based sensor to register body movement, takes players through a daily regimen of yoga, balancing exercises and other fat-fighting activities."

UH. YEAH. THAT'S WHY I BOUGHT MY DS.

*headdesks repeatedly*

Watch them completely miss the point and issue a dress-me up Princess Toadstool or some other fuckmuppetry.

(Hey, at least it addresses the issue of an aging gaming population. The wii? Target audience 40 - 62. But. How come they're missing what MADE this popular in the first place? AUGH.)

Comments

[moonwalker.livejournal.com]

Why is it hard for them to understand that women might want to play games too? New strategy? Now they'll use a lot of HOT PINK, 'cause they heard somewhere chicks really like that. Duhhhhhhh...

Mary MMM

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Because those who can't engineer, go into marketing, and those who can't market, go into management. *sigh* *headdesk*

[sakuya-masaki.livejournal.com]

You mean girls play video games? *le gasp!*

At least Nintendo realizes this. Microsoft still hasn't figured out that girls even exist much less that they might like to play video games. No, they'd rather keep their audience completely socially inept when it comes to the opposite sex by pretending girls don't exist and not making games for anyone outside of the males ages 18-34 audience. B/c who needs sex when you have Halo 3? *eyeroll*

This also reminds me of the time I gave the guy at GameStop a hard time for suggesting I trade in my old DS for the new DS Lite in *pink*. I'll keep my clunky, electric blue DS until they release another suitable blue color in the US, thank you very much.

[dracowayfarer.livejournal.com]

Hey, at least it's not as bad as Japan, where they make "dating sim" games, where in you get to seduce bouncy (in more ways than one), bubbly, giggly sex kittensgirls into taking their clothes off...

[sakuya-masaki.livejournal.com]

This is true, but at least the Japanese know how to make a more broad range of games. There really isn't much for the XBox that isn't FPS, war, or sports related. I want to like the 360, but when we had one, I could never find anything to play on it. :p And having games like the new Katamari Damacy and a cutesy RPG like Eternal Sonata as 360 exclusives makes no sense at all since they don't even appeal to their main demographic and the system still sells so poorly in Japan anyway. It's fine for them to have those games for the 360 and they should have more, but I don't see how they're going to sell many copies of those games unless they release them for the PS3 and other consoles later on.

[lackofgravitas.livejournal.com]

I have a DS Lite in *pink*. It's worth it for the unashamed 'pink DS, cool!' I got out of a 7 year old boy on Sunday ... and for the fact that my husband borrows it without any self-consciousness at all. Actually I wish he'd borrow it a bit flippin' less ...

[sakuya-masaki.livejournal.com]

Nothing wrong w/the pink DS. I just gave the guy a hard time for suggesting pink b/c I was a girl. ;p I just really like blue and wanted to see the poor sales guy sweat. XD

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

Mine is Silver...and I customized it with some Chococat stickers. And anything else I can hang off it.

[sakuya-masaki.livejournal.com]

I don't have any stickers on mine (b/c I'm hoping they'll come out w/a DS Lite in blue someday), but I have several cell phone charms hanging from it. XD I attach charms and put stickers on just about anything I can.

[dracowayfarer.livejournal.com]

Target audience 40 - 62?!? WTF.

Also: You're too late. Ubisoft already beat you to the punch on the DS.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

..

[muimi07.livejournal.com]

There are no words for that. Absolutely none.

[sakuya-masaki.livejournal.com]

It hurts... make it stop!

[reannon.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the blog fodder.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

We aim. We please. Sometimes.

[drlaurac.livejournal.com]

the Wii will have to wait for the PS3 - it's got Loco Roco and being a girly girl, I HAVE to have that land of cute for my own next!

[the-boyfriend.livejournal.com]

(posted by EK)

Duuuuude, Katamari Damacy for the Wii. KATAMARI. WII.
kajsdkajd I hope I get a job soon.

[moropus.livejournal.com]

I've been playing 'computer' games since my husband and I were wrestling over the mouse when Lemmings came out. That was early 90s?

Dad bought me the Atari 2600 the year it came out. He thought the video game place I went to after school was disgusting and he didn't want me to go in there to play Pac-man, Missile Command and Asteroids, so he bought them for me. Early 80s?

Before that, we had Pong. Mid-70s?

I also had a early Gameboy and now have a PDA with games and books on it. Late 90s, I had a midnight shift job where I sat there all night with this guy to answer the phone if it should ring. We played Doom and Heretic all night, between phone calls and naps.

Now they want a female audience? Who's been snoozing all these years?

[elizanikole.livejournal.com]

*smallish shrug*

I don't really think they're concerned about the women who've been playing video games for decades. They're targeting a whole new "genre" of women who haven't played, aren't good at, and are somewhat reluctant to buy/try a video game.


Their tactics are a dangling carrot to the FiFi's and the Brit-Brit's of the world.

[stormdragon.livejournal.com]

Agreed. While it will of course piss off gamer girls who have been playing for years, their tactic is to increase the number of girl gamers by drawing in those who have never played before out of intimidation, lack of interest, societal taboos, etc.

Of course, once they're hooked, they can then be shown less vapid games since by then, they'll be more eager to give it a go. The catch is that you have to get them to give the games a try in the first place, and by making games such as what Ubisoft did, it lowers the intimidation factor and thereby makes it easier to draw in a non-gaming girl audience. It's a necessary evil.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

Dude, think a minute.

How did it feel the last time someone 'discovered' "Asians are LIKE this" - and then skewed everything, marketing-wise towards it?

And .. it was just some cracker wish-fulfillment fantasy?

I'm already a market. An invisible one. One that nobody ever thought about - until they think of something to teach me to lose weight, cook well and raise children. Because I'm female, and that's the 'market.' And that's ALL.

This stuff is an insult to any thinking person. No, it's not nice to me. No, it's not considerate.

(It's probably no surprise I find female-only directed marketing vapid, shallow and stupid in general. The cable channels? Please. The girls-only gyms? Not doing it. The only girl-directed products I support usually are vitamin/food supplement related. Because that's what the biology supports. And that's it. What going on between my ears has a lot more in common with - well - what goes on between your ears. Seriously.)

[stormdragon.livejournal.com]

Yes, but it does sell. Not to you obviously, but it does sell to people who aren't usually into whatever the product is, normally.

Look at the Bratz dolls. Christ, I want to set them all on fire, strap grenades to them and lunch them into orbit, followed by some missile strikes. They're probably the most insulting thing to hit the 'girl' market in a while, but they sell.

The point is that they're trying to get people started. To someone who's beyond that point, yes, it is complete dumb shit, but not to the people who haven't started yet. I have thought about it, and I've worked side by side with people in marketing to look at all of the data culled from a variety of sources.

People like you, and those on your FL might think it stupid, but it works for a reason, and there's a greater goal, at least in terms of the video game market.

There are plenty of 'female friendly' games coming out that aren't insipid, heaping piles of bullshit and chips, but there ARE going to be a few because they need to get the non-gaming girls into the games somehow. Seriously, consider your average girl, with her purse doggy and clothing from places like Forever 21. Now lets toss them a game like Bioshock, Halo 3, Resident Evil, or even Zelda or Mario Kart. Do you seriously think they'll squee over those games and instantly get into them? Of course not, otherwise there wouldn't be a need to market to them in the first place.

You need to start them off slow. Cooking Mama, freaking Barbie Adventures in peanuts play doh playhouse of perfunctory penmenship, whatever. It just has to be easy, stupidly simplistic and most importantly, not threatening. You don't just shove someone who has never rode a motorcycle before onto a 1000cc crotch rocket and let them loose. You start them with something smaller.

Sure, the big kids that have been riding for years point and laugh, and think it's silly or stupid, but to that newbie? It's a damned good starting point and it won't scare them away from trying the bigger, meaner bikes later.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

I saw the Bratz dolls at Pic N Save first. They didn't sell, not at first.

Then they got to be the only thing on the shelf. Guess what happened.

Start them off right, say I. Maybe I should go hang out at Hot Topic with my DS and do my own pop survey. Any girl worth her salt (and Gucci handbag) has a cell phone. And I wonder how many games, ringtones and whatnot. Think a moment.

Yes, I do think they'd squee right off the bat. The best players I've ever met at Burnout were women.

But we kind of have to slide in when nobody's looking. And get called a number of things because we're "weird" for playing games.

You truly get what you expect from people - and on the reverse end, think about what you'd get from a game aimed at "men."

[stormdragon.livejournal.com]

95% of games ARE aimed at men. Halo 3, GoW, Bioshock, Heavenly Sword, Ninja Gaiden Sigma, GTA, Resident Evil, Street Fighter, King of Fighters, etc., etc., you get the idea.

The market, in a large sense, does not contain a lot of female gamers for a reason. There are thousands of game titles out now, and have been for years, but the number of women gamers are still incredibly low when compared to male gamers.

Game developers are exploring that and trying to make games that are more tailored towards the newbie female players. Cell phone games, while growing in number, don't make as much money as their console/pc counter parts (that's partly because of the technological limitations of U.S. cell phones).

Seriously, go ahead, take your DS to Forever 21 or any place that sells Baby Phat or other assorted clothing. No, not Hot Topic, that's not a good test of the demographic as that's not the type of girls they're trying to target. Go to one of those stores that I listed, armed with your DS and some games, and go ahead and try to convince some of the girls there to invest in it. Oh, and don't bring anything "girly". As in no pink DS or any game that is already tailored towards girls (ie. cooking mama).

Seriously. They'll think you're a freak and either avoid you, or mock you, or show/feign interest just long enough to satisfy their curiosity, then leave.

Please, prove me wrong, but I'll bet you that the experiment won't. It's been done time and again and the results are always the same. Yes, it sucks, but that's the reality of it. If you want to blame someone, blame the target demographic for being into stupid shit like that. It pisses me off to no end that it has to be done, but it does, otherwise, video gaming will continue to be boy dominated. If people are fine with that, then whatever. Me, I'd like a bit more estrogen in the field to offset the male stupidity I have to put up with daily.