It has been years since the stereotype of teen boy video gamers in the US was wholly true. Most video gamers are adults, and have been since the turn of the century. The percentage of women who are gamers has also been on the rise, so much so that they have dominated casual gaming (think Bejeweled and Scrabble) for some time.
Just over half of casual gamers are women, according to the
Casual Games
Association's "Market Report 2007." And the association said
that nearly three-quarters of casual gamers who pay for their games are
female. This demographic shift has not escaped the marketers who target such gamers.
Now video gamer demographics are changing yet again. Nintendo has sold more than 10 million Wii consoles by expanding the audience for video games, according to a July 2008 Associated Press (AP) article. About 28% of the 70 million owners worldwide of the company's handheld DS are female, most of them adult women. Large numbers of adult women and families now use consoles, and are playing more than casual board games on PCs.
The result is that women now not only dominate casual game play, but make up a growing percentage of all video gamers, according to an Entertainment Software Association (ESA)-sponsored study conducted by Ipsos-MediaCT. The ESA said that four out of 10 US video gamers in July 2008 were female and that women ages 18 and older accounted for one-third of game players, compared with only 18% for boys ages 17 and younger.
Other industry watchers agree. Michael Pachter, analyst at Wedbush Morgan, said in the AP article that "five years ago, up to 90% of gamers were the core audience of young men. Today, it's more like 60% to 70%."
Game play grew nearly equally for both genders according to a March 2008 survey by E-Poll; 14% of female respondents ages 18 to 34 said their gaming had increased in the previous six months, compared with 19% of 18-to-34-year-old males.
However, as a July 2008 Los Angeles Times article noted, reaching beyond the traditional 18-to-34-year-old male gamer "requires more than just repackaging superhero games and buying ads in 'Cosmo.'"
King.com and Electronic Arts' Pogo offer ad-supported short games online. The Times reported that nearly two-thirds of King.com's 10 million unique monthly visitors are female. Microsoft's appeal to female gamers includes a goodwill ambassador for women on its Xbox LIVE online game service.
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