Wii owners are still mostly traditional, males under 40. However they have a lot more people actually playing the Wii besides just the owners, leading to the above graphs of the Wii "users" demographics.

Yep, that's the funny thing about Wii owners and Wii users. Even if you male 18-24 and do not have a Wii, there's a great chance that your mom\girlfriend\wife does have one... and this makes you potential consumer - you're playing Wii from time to time, and eventually buy some Wii games.

So I get a troll warning and claims I am a fan boy about my comments. I stand by them that nintendo thought out side the box in terms of marketing. The are marketing children and women more than core male gamers. I am a gamer and male and I do like nintendo and they do make awesome games. Dont get me wrong. Nintendo has something that Sony and MS can only wish for. But even nintendo themselves said they want to expose gaming to a larger audience.

And I'm 38, have a Wii and have been playing video games for 32 years, during which I have probably completed more games than most here.

This core market stuff has always been a bit of a myth. The average gamer may be 28 or whatever but its not like thats where the highest single concentration is by age.

In terms of gamers of a certain age out of all gamers who game its probably some kind of distribution like:

3-8 - 15% (Plurality of gamers are kids)

9-14 - 13%

15-20 - 11%

21-26 - 9%

27 - 32 - 8% ("average gamer is 28")

32 - 37 - 7%

38 - 43 - 6%

44 - 49 - 6%

50 - 55 - 5%

56 - 61 - 4%

62 - 67 - 4%

68 - 73 - 3%

74 - 79 - 3%

80 - 85 - 3%

85 - 90 - 3%

90+ - 3%

Wii probably has 30-35% of the male 18-35 audience, filibuster proof majorities of the female audience, and ~50% of men outside the 18-35 range. In the West. Japan sees probably a smoother 60% across all demographics. Sega, Sony, and Microsoft marketing have all focused on making their consoles seem 'cool' enough so that people over say...12 wouldn't feel ashamed of using a device a 6 year old uses.

When the average PS2 owner of say...22 plays PS2 do you think he wants to be reminded that there are probably 40 million PS2s exclusively used by children? Of course not. Thats the beauty of marketing. Nintendo's goal seems to be getting everyone to enjoy the same content so that there is no shame in doing an activity that a six year old does. If you don't think its possible, consider the accolade athletes in the major sports get for playing a 'kid's game'. It can be done, but the message and content has to be just right and Nintendo hadn't nailed it completely since the Game Boy and NES era until DS and Wii rolled around.

Thanks everyone! This information is very helpful. Looks like Nintendo really does a pretty good job in expanding the gaming audience. It's a bit of surprise for me :)

Their weakest link seems to be college ages, 18-23. It's almost like a break in the set of data, because it's a smooth transition between age groups otherwise, but plummets right there

Of course, it's Japan, so its impossible to segue that into my college demographic, but certainly the majority console owned in my house is a 360 (3 or 4 of them total, set against my Wii, one kid's PS2, and one N64)

Since the Wii has reached out and grabbed new audiences. I wonder how many are active gamers. We all know that the average 15-25 year old maler will put more time into gaming than sleeping. But what about the 30 year old women who purchases the system for themselves. I know a few that have and they only bought it because it was cool. I wonder how often they use it. Its one thing to sell a system, but you do need to move software.

I hope you got a boat, we wouldn't want you to drown in that river.

well, just looking at shipment information, they ship plenty of software.

read this article if you want more details.

http://news.vgchartz.com/news.php?id=2917