Pokemon X/Y is set to capture the female audience. And why the 3DS needs a price cut even more than the WiiU

[savisn]

Nice article.

I agree with everything except the price cut.

I do think they are targeting the female audience more. As Conegamer said Animal Crossing (and I'd add Tomodochi in Japan) has picked up a huge female audience for 3DS so it makes sense to appeal more broadly. In a totally unscientific experiment I showed my 5.5 year old daughter the two pictures of X/Y. She loved the "deer with rainbow antlers". She like the other but said it was a "giant" and more "scary" although she like the rainbow behind it (as she put it - more of a multi-colored background). But she was definitely more drawn to the X. Don't have a boy to try the opposite but I know when I was 5.5 I would have picked Y hands down as being more "cool" just like I always liked the bad guys in Star Wars that looked cool. Note that isn't strictly boy/girl but having a scary and elegant/majestic box art seems smart to attract different types of people.

Pokemon is also entering an interesting phase. Some of it's earliest players from 1996 that were say 12 when it was released are at the age where they start having kids. It's still the early phase of this for this franchise whereas Mario already went through that. In fact I think there was a large contingent of Wii buyers that grew up on Nintendo left for Playstation in high school/college and returned for Wii with their kids. I've enjoyed sharing games from my youth with my kids and I know my friends have as well. Sonic and others are going through that now too and seeing a resurgence. Nostalgia and sharing experiences is a powerful tool and I'm sure Nintendo will take advantage of that in full with Pokemon. I know if I had grown up a Pokemon player I'd want to share it with my daughters and having a more appealing version can only help so long as the gameplay remains excellent.

As for price I don't think cutting $40 would push enough extra units to be warranted. If you assume they make $10 net per game sold they'd have to sell 4 additional new games per 3DS sold to break even which is around where the current attach rate is. I think they'd be better off creating a great bundle with some nice sales around Black Friday to ensure they get full pricing from those that will buy a 3DS at launch just for X/Y and won't wait for the holiday season. Then sell a ton around the holidays with great bundles and sales.