teigaga said:
Theres really no evidence of this If by fringe you mean the casual console audience that buy only 1-3 games per year. If however you mean the audience nintendo brought in with the blue ocean startegy of wii sports, wii fit and brain training they're not the heart of the rock band userbase. The rock band audience has been around from PS2 days and cannot easily be defined by demographic. |
That's why I call them fringe and not casual customers, these are the inbetween customers that buy more games than casuals but less than hardcore, the ones who buy simpler fare from time to time to get a break from bigger games and perhaps have fun with friends. The ones who got hooked on wordfeud and similar, competitive games like Quiz Battle on mobile devices, all the while still buying every odd console or PC game as well, and the same that made up the chunk of the user base for games like Buzz, Singstar and Rock Band. Of course, the majority of Quiz Battle and wordfeud gamers don't care much for regular games. Look at Nintendo's Brain Training games for another good example of how these customers have changed habbits.
Fringe customers are neither here nor there but there are better, not to mention a whole lot cheaper, alternatives now on mobile devices and perceived value rules the day. It's not like Rock Band is cheap with all the instruments anyway. This is also why Wii Fit U was a horrible idea despite the success of the first two games; there are now better and miles cheaper alternatives on mobile devices. This is probably the biggest indicator we have right now of what these customers are doing, while Wii Fit and Wii Fit Plus had well over 20% attach rate; Wii Fit U has slightly more than 5% at this point, this figure will shrink as the lifetime sales of the console increase (likely ending up around 2.5-3% when all is said and done).
Developers are still dealing with how they go about catering to a splintered market and these changes are still fairly recent. Expect a lot of games to fall on their asses before things change much.
I could be wrong, who knows? I guess the sales of Rock Band 4 will tell at any rate.
