“No,.. it’s the children who are wrong.”

Going over a recent post at Engadget, I was surprised by the recent results of the latest Nielsen report on “The State of the Video Gamer.”  David Hinkle however, seemed to take this in stride (see his review at Joystiq). This caused me to take pause and reflect a little bit about what I thought I knew about the gaming industry. I used to be a very avid gamer, and as one of many hobbyists who still build my own machines, I still like to keep a close eye on the general state of the industry.

After reading the report, a couple of points stuck with me. Firstly, especially after the last 2 years, I’d always thought of the Wii as the undisputed king of the console market. Gauging press, reaction, and the general clamor for Nintendo’s darling, it’s easy to see why. But according to Nielsen, the Wii is trailing behind in terms of popularity and sales. While I’ve always been a fan of the PC as a gaming platform, everything I’ve experienced with the Wii speaks to its superior ability to cater to a market that was crying out for attention; groups of players (in the same space) looking for socially-oriented gaming experiences. No other console is as party/gathering/birthday-friendly. No other console features game franchises that have dominated the lucrative “family-friendly” market forever. And quite frankly, no other console can get away with releasing games that just do not compare to the PS3 or Xbox360 when it comes to pure graphics capabilities. Now these stats were mostly relevant to December 2008, a time when the Wii was particularly hard to find on store shelves, but is that the only reason for this discrepancy in market share?

Second, and this is straight from the report: “Females 25 years of age and older make up the largest block of PC game players…in December 2008.” Now before you fire up your email client, let me clarify that this surprises me for a number of different reasons. Even given my previous assumptions about the popularity of the Wii, it would not have surprised me as much to see a sharp increase in the numbers of female console gamers. The number of titles that appeal to both genders are incredibly vast. Conversely, the number of new PC games has been on the decline in the last 5 years or so. There just isn’t as much money to be made producing new PC titles anymore. Is it possible that MMO titles like WoW and their kin are responsible for holding onto the increased gamerGirl demographic?

These are questions I don’t really have answers for, but I think are still worth discussing. In a climate where everyone’s had to rethink their business models, it would be interesting to get some insight into the marketing plans of companies in industries where we once thought we were comfortable in. Assumptions that were once valid are now worthless. Strategies to capture the right audience are most likely outdated.

Oh, and one final note from the report. The most popular PC game played by both men and women (25-49)? … Solitaire.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 at 11:37 pm and is filed under gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.