| Soundwave said: I've answered why in other threads, so I'm not going to go deep into it, but fundamentally I think a lot of people here don't understand the female demographics nor do they understand the impact of the smartphone on said demographic. And they also think smartphones are just some minor blip on the radar. But I will say this -- even Mr. Miyamoto has said he cannot get his wife to play Nintendo console games, he brings them home, but she doesn't play them. But she will play smartphone games. Even Mr. Miyamoto can't even win this arguement, good luck to the rest of you. Too many people are very naive on this board about smartphone's impact on the gaming sector, they don't understand how much has changed. Hell, smartphones will soon be a bigger industry than console gaming, but's not not neccessarily console gaming shrinking, it's simply a huge other industry that's been created on top of consoles. But take a wild guess which demographics that industry is taking from, because it's not dogs & cats. And people are still buying PS4s/XBoxes/Switches (mainly men), so it's not from that audience. So who could be left? Well if you actually do research on who plays smartphone games, it's actually majority female to boot, they are more than half the smartphone gaming audience. That's incredible. |
So, I finally found the time to answer. Sorry to keep you waiting!
Your argument seems to be that the Switch can outsell the Wii by catering to male audiences aged 20-40 and that female audiences are out of reach because of the mobile phone market, right? But the numbers and Nintendo's actions tell a very different story.
Adressable market - First of all, matching Wii sales by catering to male audiences only is simply impossible. Let's take the US as an example: There are currently 80 million people aged 20-40 in the United States. Half of those are male. That's an adressable target audience of 40 million people. The Wii sold 45 million units in the US total. That means, even mathematically, it is impossible for the Switch to match the Wii's sales, unless it reaches 100% market penetration among the market you want them to adress. No even the iPhone comes even remotely close. I tried to use a broader definition and include older men and boys - but you explicitly said in your posts that you think the Switch is not aimed at children and Nintendo shouldn't try to cater to children and instead position the Switch as a hardcore gamer machine. You also don't want them to sell to older people ("soccer moms", grandpas, etc.).
Nintendo doesn't agree with you - You support your view by two things. 1) A quote by Miyamoto and 2) the fact that the Switch sold primarily to male audiences. First things first, you should never listen to Miyamoto when it comes to market analysis. He has absolutely no idea. He thinks the Virtual Boy didn't sell because of bad marketing, he thought the Gamepad was a great idea and can't understand why Pikmin doesn't sell well. Miymoto is an artist / developer and not a market analyst.
So, what does Nintendo say about the female market? First of all, the Wii and DS were highly successful because of women. Second, the reason the Wii U and 3DS didn't sell was because they didn't reach the female market. Iwata explicitly said that the key to making the 3DS more successful was to adress women of all ages (even girls and seniors). That's exactly what Nintendo did on the 3DS with titles like Mario Kart, Tomodatchi Collection and Animal Crossing and it paid off. Nintendo is also adressing the female market with the 2DS XL. You are the one to regularly point out that Nintendo uses young male actors in their Switch ads. Well, guess who they use in the ads for the 2DS XL? Lots of women and children. They are explicitly targeting the female market with it - why would they target a market if said market "was gone" and on smartphones now? Here's another article on that matter.
Also, Nintendo explicitly said they think the Switch will equal Wii sales because they will sell multiple consoles to one household. So even if the first customer is a male aged 20-40 what about those other people in that household Nintendo wants to adress? Unless you want them to exclusively target gay couples (no problem with that) this statement by Kimishima is in stark contrast to what you are saying.
Your ideas about the male / female split in console gaming are wrong - 40% of all home console players are female. 45% of all handheld gamers are women. 55% of all mobile phone gamers are women (or even just 51%). You make it seem like there's this huge number of women playing on smartphones compared to men but it's just not true. The only console that caters primarily to men (65%, see linked source) is the Xbox One and coincidentally, Microsoft is selling way less consoles than Sony this gen! So I have two questions for you: 1) How are women abandoning console gaming ("smartphone drift" is what you said I think) compared to men when just as many men play games on smartphones - why would the female market be un-adressable but the male market not? 2) Why would women need to come back to dedicated gaming in the first place when they were never gone? This brings me to my next point.
Not a single console was ever successful without women - adding to this is the fact that not a single console was ever a success without women. According to the data above, the PS4 has more female gamers than the Xbox One and is more successful. Iwata explicitly said to make the 3DS sell more, it would need to cater to female audiences. Also, only 7% of all Wii U eShop purchases were made by women (data from 2014). We know the DS and Wii were a huge success with women and the PS2 sold incredibly well because of women later in its lifecylce (Sing Star, yeah!). Do you want me to make a regression analysis to prove it? Higher percentage of female players equals higher console sales. (I don't really want to make one, to be honest. But the data points I gathered and scribbled on my Whiteboard show a clear correlation).
Mario does not cater to hardcore males only - You say the Switch is a hit with hardcore gamers and I agree. But to suggest that a company like Nintendo, with mass market / female friendly IP's like Mario, Mario Kart, Animal Crossing, Tomodatchi, Kirbiy, even Pikmin will be primarily successful with male gamers while not attracting female ones is quite outlandish in my opinion. Sony and Microsoft put a lot more resources into competing with the male aged 20-40 demographics than Nintendo. And even they have a sizable amount of female customers.
Me being naive - Lastly, I want to adress the point of me being naive. For some reason you seem to be under the impression that it's personally important for me that Nintendo makes the Switch another Wii. It's not. In my opinion you seem to be more invested in the idea of the Switch catering primarily to hardcore gamers (and for some reason only hardcore gamers, though not even Sony and Microsoft do that). What I do is look at the data and go from there. I remember the Wii generation when people continued to be perplexed about Nintendo's sales - but only because they refused to look at the data. They did not want a mass market console to be successful and so they ignored these things and ignored the theory of disruption and the blue ocean theory, which Nintendo based its successes on (you did a similar thing in another post. I brought up Disruption and you said "I don't care if the Wii was disruptive" - that's explicitly brushing aside one of the most robust business theories ever created and substituting it with "the casuals have moved on! Females play on smartphones!"). They also ignored that the PS2 was a big hit because it catered to the casual gamers, as well!
Well, that was a long post haha. Last but not least I want to say that even though we don't agree on this I respect your opinion and respect you as a poster. Maybe my posts comes off as harsh but I'm not trying to attack you. (It's the same as in the feminism thread: I'm not against women's rights, I just think we should look at the data instead of arguing from an emotional point of view).
