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Dryden on 31 December 2007
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Game_boy said:
Played_Out said:
I hate myself for stoking the fire like this, but...

Just 'cos you don't like it, doesn't mean it's not true. When the PSP was launched I predicted it would never sell at the level of the DS for one blindingly obvious reason: outside of Japan, hardly any adults would use a handheld gaming device.
Sure, we could all give anecdotal evidence to the contrary, but the average age of handheld gamers is much lower than home console gamers.
Even though Nintendo has had some success capturing the 40+ market with the DS (and the wii), the overwhelming majority of players are small children. Why do you think the majority of games are really simple and usually based around colourful cartoon characters? How many adults do you think bought Nintendogs?

IN SUMMARY: Quit bashing Pachter. Like it or not, he's smarter than you are.

Are you serious? So the Touch! Generations branding hasn't had any effect. That's why my parents (who only have media and friends as influences, not me) bought Brain Training and a DS for my grandparents.


There are three DSes in my household: mine, my wifes, and my sons. So that would make two adult-owned versus one for the rugrat. The DS-Wii virus has spread to my friends too, and among them I can count 3 more DSes sold to males over the age of 30, and they have not bought one for their kids, at least not yet.

I guess my point is, is when do the numbers and the evidence go from being anecdotal to indicitive of a trend?

Saying the DS is for kids is as short sighted as saying the Wii only sells to casuals. That is simply not true. Just  because Nintendo's seventh gen platforms are appealing to one market segment does not disqualify the units from selling to another, and handhelds have never been the sole domain of kids. Tens of millions of adult bought GameBoys to play Tetris!

Look at the DS numbers. The top two titles, Nintendogs and Pokemon, were multicarts which has artificially inflated their numbers (and Pokemon is most definitely snapped up by adults). Now, beyond those two top selling titles, you've got NSMB and Brain Training at the 10M plateau. Below that in the 1M+ tier you've got Final Fantasy III, More Brain Training, English Training, Big Brain Academy, Tetris DS, Cooking Mama, Clubhouse Games, etc ...

Sorry, but these titles aren't selling to kids. Of the Top 20 DS titles, which will all wind up being 2M+ sellers, I count 7 of them that could be labelled adult-targetted, and another 7 or 8 that are absolutely cross-generational.

Where's the demographic split? I doubt anybody knows. I will, however, venture a guess that even if adults are the minority on the DS, Nintendo's minority market is still bigger than Sony's ENTIRE market.