A `Seismic Shift`: female gamers and Nintendo

Here`s an interesting article.

To summarize–for the first time, the majority (very slim, but still there) of DS and Wii owners in Japan are female. To be more exact, 53% of DS users and 51% of Wii owners in Japan are female. This certainly bears out my own observations–the DS comes in not just 1, but 2 shades of pink (not to mention my own preference, an elegant royal blue!), and on the trains, I see little girls as well as women my own age (20s) playing the DS all the time. Many of my female friends (and not just my gamer girlfriends) own a DS. I just bought one myself–I convinced myself to do it because the DS has a Japanese-English kanji dictionary, but its also because I want to play games--Zelda, Final Fantasy, Animal Crossing, Phoenix Wright! Maybe even Nintendogs... hey, Im a little lonely now that I have an apartment all to myself.

They cite the many lifestyle and cutesy girl games as being a cause of this–personally, I see it more as a result. But they also mentioned that Wii Sports is particularly popular among the female demographic, much to my amusement…

Another interesting thing: comparing this to the why are videos game seen as kid entertainment thread, the article also mentions a sizable fanbase for Nintendo products, composed of users between the ages of 40 and 62…

As a long time women PC gamer who gradually and painfully gave up on computer games (Oblivion excepted) this makes me smile. I was sick and tired of being a minority; I was sick of naked women on the covers of magazines; I was sick of the stares in gaming stores. Now, years later, the fact that I can whip out my DS on the train and get nary a second glance makes me smile. Now to get me some more DS games… (so far I only have Tetris).

This echoes what I’ve seen as well. I provided telephone tech support to my mother last night while she hooked up her Nintendo Wii. It’s the first console she’s ever bought for herself and the first time she’s ever shown more than a passing interest in video games. All because she tried Wii Sports at my house a few weeks ago and was hooked.

Nintendo has been smart.

Every time I whip something out on the train I get arrested… :frowning:

There has, I think, been a steady upward trend in the number of female gamers for some time. I think part of it is generational–the current generation has been thoroughly immersed in a technology culture for their entire lives. The use of computers, cell phones, PDAs, and other gadgets is thoroughly ingrained in men and women alike. If you already have the tech, why not play games on it? And once you’re into games, you may find you like them enough to buy dedicated equipment to play on.

Still, a big jump centered around the DS and the Wii suggests that Nintendo has really hit upon something new. I suspect that it’s a combination of factors–a more intuitive interface, a wider variety of games not specifically targeted at the traditional male-dominated market, increased opportunities for social play. Maybe it’s all of those, combined with being at the right place at the right time; the new consoles may have appeared as we reached a breakover point in the proportion of female gamers–a point where sheer numbers “legitimize” gaming for women.

This is very cool–I had no idea such a thing existed. I’ll have to look for it.

I want to get a Wii just so I can play “Cooking Mama.” I think this might be the first video game devoted to cooking. In fact, after I’ve bought my iPod and a computer for my room, that’s what I’m going to get.

The DS version of Cooking Mama is supposedly better. But hey, I haven’t played either, so what do I know :wink: If you like it go for it. A Wii is always a good investment ^^

Second, at best.

:smiley:

My wife found our Wii or rather she remembered to go looking for it when we walked into Walmart that day. I had grown frustrated with looking for them this past June. I should mention that my family owns a Sega, Playstion, X-Box and a Game Cube. Before the Wii my wife had only showed an interest in Monkey Ball.

I agree, I think that’s a huge part of it – games not specifically designed/targeted/marketed with males in mind, and for that matter, not with females in mind either. In my experience with game R&D, it’s the core gameplay which really appeals to a gamer, and there is no significant difference with regard to gender.

Unfortunately, I think they are only available in Japan. (Dont know where youre located.)They are designed for Japanese people learning English, but can also be used the other way around. I think you can buy them on imported games type websites like play-asia.com though. The one I have is called Sonomama Kanji Rakubiki Jiten; it costs about 4000 yen. The really cool thing is that you can draw in kanji you dont know using the stylus (although it helps a lot if you are familar with the stroke order). You can also draw in the word in English and so on. Its not perfect, but if I bought an electronic dictionary that could do the same thing (these are very popular in Japan) it would probably cost like $200 and I couldn`t play Zelda on it either…