Pharmacys selling Wii/DS - What does this mean for the industry?

[johnlucas]

Gamerace said:

Here in Canada, one of our major pharmaceutical chains has started selling Nintendo Wiis and DSs along with a small selection of accessories and titles (all mainstream and all Nintendo titles).

Why is this significant? Because it's aimed at women. Men do not goto pharmacys to shop for anything outside of cold medicine or such, but women obviously do, and the way the entire section is done up is female centric. Heck, the whole store is.

Nintendo purposely designed Wii to appeal to mothers in particular and while we've seen the Wii is reported to have 1/3 female base, this is the most telling thing I've seen that their decision is actually changing the entire industry and pushing it (or at least Nintendo) into mainstream consciousness and appeal.

While guys buy the majority of electronics, women due the vast majority of buying, period. So if this becomes successful for this one chain, others will obviously follow and then other women centric stores may follow suit. This may cause female ownership percentage to rise. And possibly rise dramatically as this is largely, an untapped market. Nor do the PS3 or 360 have anything to really offer this market (aside from the very small percentage of women who are gamers already and may play Halo or such).

What do you think?

NOW do you understand my 60 million at end of 2008 prediction?

John Lucas

P.S.: I can make an off-color joke about the name "London Drugs" but I'll let somebody else take up that battle.