Cliffy B is probably an expert on female videogames seeing as Epic had made tons of them.

He comes off as somewhat of a docuhebag, just like the creator of Heavy Rain himself, maybe they should work together? He does, however, have a point, it could very well be a "female friendly" title.

CGI_Quality is a girl, confirmed.

Edit: Its because the young boys he 'could pick up' with his fast car don't like Heavy Rain, so he knows.

I don't see this as him being a "douchebag", he's often given his support/praise of Heavy Rain, and has obviously played it and likes it. This sounds as if he's upset about the direction the marketing took because since he's likes Heavy Rain so much, he'd want to see it be even more successful than it already is.

Thought that was common knowledge?

I agree with him.

Well he has a gf so more that 90% of this forum.

Only played the demo of Heavy Rain but I can see his point.  I mean it is very similar to some of those PC and DS mystery games, although the content is more or less more adult oriented.  Closer to something of that of some of the TV shows.  And also, given that the game is mainly an interactive story, it is a little more low maintenance than some other games.

Obviously though, it'll be targeting specific kinds of female gamers, or mainly middle aged women... the same target on the PC and DS ones.  Only problem I could see arise, is that maybe it is a little too interactive for its own good.  Having a control mechanism for everything maybe not the best choice for them, and maybe just a single button to do some of these scenes would be best.  Or possible Move can alleviate some of those issues.

However, was it a missed opportunity?  I don't think it was.  The marketing would have had to have been completely different and really had to change the nature of that marketing.  I think for the expenses of that compared to what they may have gotten out of it may have not been worth it.

Yes after the success of Heavy Rain, they have gained a more popular name brand.  Could be furthered depending on how Move impacts the title.  But yes with this next project, he could do something similar to this and focus more on that direction and really have a larger hit.  And I really think he could do it in a way where he doesn't have it specifically catered to just one age group or sex.  Could make it quite mainstream.  I mean TV shows like CSI and NCIS are popular because of the characters, story, and the mystery in that story.  All ages and both sexes.  So being able to translate that same popularity in game form would be quite a hit.  Heavy Rain definitely was a step in the right direction to getting those things into the mainstream.

I'd say he's shy of the mark but heading in the right direction.  I do believe Heavy Rain could be marketed to non-gamers, but not necessarily just to "females" but non-gamers in general.

If I was Sony I'd consider a second wave of Move centric advertising, based around the Move version, appealing to non-gamers as an interactive drama where you play all the major parts.  I remain convinced that, in addition to all the dance, sports, etc. stuff that has been shown to go over well to non-gamers there must be a market for mature titles for non-gamers - and HR is far and away the obvious choice currently.

With Move, Sony could bypass the usual complex game scenario and push easy interaction in something deeper and more adult that a game of ping pong.

I agree and I wrote something similar about female audience for QD's games already some weeks ago in another HR related thread.

If QD continue to develop games based on mainstream crime stories and if they ever decide to go multiplat they should include Wii and PC - the two stationary gaming systems with the largest female userbases. If they decide to stay exclusively on PS3 though, they should advertise their games more to the female audience than to the male in my opinion. HR was success, but I think it could've been even more successful if Sony made a TV marketing campaign similar to what Nintendo did with the Prof. Layton franchise (which has a huge female userbase).