Slashdot Mirror
An Older Demographic May Soon Dominate Gaming
Reservoir Hill writes "An article from last week runs down the new mass audience for gaming among families, women and older people. The importance of the mass audience in gaming's spectacular growth is seen most clearly in the success of Nintendo's Wii, which is far outselling its more technically advanced hardware competitors, the Xbox 360 from Microsoft and PlayStation 3 from Sony. Wii Play was the No. 2-selling game of last year even though it received an abysmal score of 58 out of 100 at Metacritic, which aggregates reviews. The Times says that as video games become more popular hard-core gamers are becoming an ever smaller part of the audience. 'Paradoxically, at a moment when technology allows designers to create ever more complex and realistic single-player fantasies, the growth in the now $18 billion gaming market is in simple, user-friendly experiences that families and friends can enjoy together.'"
...How many politicians are going to go after games continually when they gain the same status as movies in the public eye?
If you've ever played Wario Ware or Mario Party with a bunch of friends while half drunk, you know how fun it can be.
Games don't have to have top of the line graphics to be fun. Nintendo got it right with the Wii.
But its only 10 bucks. Face it, you were going to get the second controller anyway, why not spend 10 bucks and get a handful of mini games out of it too.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
The reason Wii Play sold so well: $10 game with the purchase of a Wiimote.
See my Home Theater
Wii Play sold so well because it costs about the same as a Wii Remote and it comes with a Wii Remote, so you basically got the game for free. Many people bought Wii Play the same day they bought their Wii console.
I don't disagree with the general premise of the article, but using Play as a data point is pretty weak. The game itself is only $10, since its bundled with a $40 controller that is required for almost all games. As a bargain game, I don't think it competes at the same level as say Bioshock or Metroid.
http://bgcommonsense.blogspot.com
The new emerging Wii market can't simply be lumped into the same hardcore gaming market.
The Wii market is separate from 360 and PS3 so trying to figure out why Wii is outselling the PS3 and 360 doesn't work.
It's not simply about being a "Gamer" now. The way most Wii games work isn't in any way similar to the traditional gaming market. Stop treating it like the same thing.
Not everyone feels like getting off their ass and actually moving.
shows this new demographics buys games, we can talk about a shift in the industry. Until then, it's just a reporter trying to predict an industry shift that shows no signs of actually happening yet. Say what you will, they might be massively more expensive to product, but hardcore gamers actually BUY hardcore games. I'm 40 and I have spent every free minute since last August trying to keep up with the great load of games for the 360 and PS3 and am currently splitting my time between multiplayer COD4 and Ratchet & Clank Future.
I love the Wii, but you can't use Wii Play as any kind of reliable metric for the popularity of that kind of game. It's essentially a $10 game bundled with a $40 remote that most console owners were intending to buy anyway.
Like any genre, the Minigame phenomenon is only as strong as the title itself. Raving Rabbids was actually pretty solid; Carnival Games is utter garbage. Unfortunately, publishers see the unintentional success of games like Wii Play and assume that's what people want.
Mario Party is a classic, so that's going to be popular. Raving Rabbids is a solid enough game that makes good use of the controller. Wario Ware is goofy and fun, but is becoming tired and cliche.
Frankly, the less party games we see, the better off the few that remain will be. Otherwise it all becomes shovelware at some point.
When you look at board games which do you think do better, the really complex Avalon Hill games that target a very select audience or Candy Land and Life?
As much as I live Settlers of Cattan and Axis and Allies, I see Monopoly on more shelves at homes than of the previous.
When you make something easier to understand, you're going to get more market share: lowest common denominator, right?
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Finally maybe the games industry will realise that great graphis does not equal a great game. It's always been about the gameplay. It's that certain something something that means you can pick it up and get hooked and just keep on playing.
Where are the great graphics in Tetris, in Pac Man, and others. Games that are constantly played all over the world all the time. They're simple, easy to play, hard to master fun games.
This is what the Wii does best. Gameplay.
Not to mention the Wii Play was bundled with a second remote which together cost less than many of these amazing other games...that had to factor into its sales figures.
I imagine this also has something to do with penetration of relatively cheap gaming consoles vs. high-end PC hardware - and it's not to say that sales of BioShock were shabby, is it? Just lower.
That company must have gone ages ago, after all, you say there is not enough of a market compared to simpler games, so since they were founded in 1958, by now they should have gone belly up.
Ah but no, Avalon Hill has spend decades succesfully making a profit selling extremely complex games. Way more complex then Monopoly, and still somehow making a profit, enough to satisfy the parent company Hasbro. Mmm, were have I heard that name before. Hasbro, don't they also own Parker Brothers, the publishers of Monopoly?
Why on earth would Hasbro publish both a lowest common denominator game like monopoly (fans, please lynch the OP for those words, not me) and extremely complex games?
Because unlike you the managers at Hasbro ain't completely devoid of any business sense whatsoever.
You can't sell the maximum amount of goods if you only sell to the majority. The smart person will identify the various groups that exist and try to meet each of them with their own line of products.
Idiots MBA's often just don't get this most basic premise, they see a the majority market (and often get that wrong as well) and then think EVERY product should be aimed at that market. It is extremely short-sighted especially when that market is already being dominated with an other product. Don't try to out Coca-Cola Coca-Cola. Don't try to out WoW WoW.
This is what Nintendo did with the Wii, realizing they could NOT compete directly with Sony or Microsoft they instead tapped in another segment of the market although it is important to note that the Wii has more "adult" games then the Gamecube had before. Even nintendo seems to realize that trying to shoot for just one corner of a market at the expense of all others isn't smart which is why you got violent shooters on a Nintendo a console giant who in the west once censored blood and anything nasty or naughty.
What gets me in stories like these is that some people seem to think market share is important, it isn't. Profit is. If you can make a living selling a product to 10 people out of 6 billion you got a lousy market share, but are still a success.
It is almost like saying that simple movies get the largest audiences so everyone should make simple movies. TV execs already live by this rule, does gaming have to follow?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
There have always been girls and women in gaming.
Gamers have always come in different races and ages and income brackets.
Someone who plays Tetris for an hour at a time three times a week is a video game consumer, just as someone who raids in WoW for five hours a night is.
Nintendo hasn't so much blown open the demographics -- though they have -- as they've blown open the debate and the recognition.
No-one has said, in eighty years, "all watchers of movies fit the same demographic." Television has ten networks PER demographic. So why this overwrought, antiquated insistence that All Gamers Are Of The Same Ilk?
I worked for Gamestop for a year, in 2005, and I developed my own admittedly anti-PC gamer categories. One of the MANY demographcis I saw represented was the fratboy/thug gamer: the white or hispanic males between ages 18 and 24, who were buying every sex and violence 360 title they could snap up. To so much of the world, they are the only gamers. To us, they were about 20% of our patrons.
If the rest of the world is finally, FINALLY starting to recognize that "gamer" means a lot, LOT more than just the fratboy/thug or the EQ addict in mom's basement, then so much the better.
The Times says that as video games become more popular hard-core gamers are becoming an ever smaller part of the audience.
No; adolescent males are becoming an ever-smaller part of the audience. More mature gamers, both older and younger, both hardcore and casual, want something very different from the testosterone-soaked boom-fest FPS of the month.
So I guess that the new demographic Nintendo is going for are the wiitirees? Mario Shuffleboard? Early Bird Revolution? Mario Kart will include an Oldsmobile with the left blinker left on? Wii Sports includes "Getting the kids off the lawn" and Bingo?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne