The PS3 and 360 are not 99% men.... Something many don't seem to understand is that you "hardcore" gamers are much more of a minority than you think.... consider all these people on the internet complaining that the Wii doesn't have a game they want to buy every month. If they truly buy 1 game per month, that adds up to quite a big collection of games. Yet the attach ratio for the consoles is about 5-7 games. Clearly there are a large number of PS360 owners with only 2 or 3 games.


The Wii I believe is just short of 50% female users... but that includes people like my mum and sister who don't actually have their own console.
In terms of the gender of those that bought it, the Wii is about 40% female, compared to about 20-25% for PS3 and X360.

I may be wrong, but I would be shocked if more than 10% of PS360 owners are women. If you are talking about players that might be right, but it really seems no women actually buy those systems.

 I agree

rofl, owned

I think there's a difference between saying that the Wii has a lot of "female" customers and "what’s driving the Wii sales is the use of Wii by women, girls and families", but whatever..

Ah, yes. I am just a lesbian trapped in a man's body. Hence, the woman part.

It was from Nintendo themselves... they were touting the Wii as having reached more female gamers than the other consoles so they will not have exaggerated them, PS3 and 360 are around 20% female.

Like I said, many of the hardcore internet based gamers may not realise it, but even on the PS3 and 360 the majority of owners are casual players, who have about 5 games and play maybe 4-5 hours a week if that.

So Ubisoft is sexist, exploitative, AND retarded?

Publishers in general need -- absolutely need -- to put things in to terms of demographic target audiences.

Things like Wii Sports or Mario Kart absolutely throw them for loops: that is, games that appeal to young and old, male and female. It's like the concept simply doesn't compute. They don't know where to start when they don't have a target demographic.

Just look at the difference between Catz and Dogz and Nintendo's own Nintendogs. I'm serious. The cover of Nintendogs is neutral: it has neutral colors like Red or Green and simply pictures of puppies. As a retail employee, I can tell you that this game likely split 70/30 girls/boys. Taking care of puppies does tend to be a girly thing, but honestly, everyone likes dogs. It was common to sell this game to boys, too.

Now, Catz and Dogz. The covers to these games are lined in pink, and in many of the Petz titles, there are stars and other "cute" stuff on the cover. This is the equivalent of writing the name "Doom" in blood, to let people know: "This is written in blood! It's violent and for boys!" The result? Every single copy of Petz games I ever sold was to girls. Every one. And the other result: I sold about 1/5th as many Petz games as I did Nintendogs.

Not every game has to be literally absolutely neutral when it comes to gender preferences: that's not what I'm arguing. What I'm arguing instead is that most publishers go way off in the other extreme: publishers pick a demographic, and hammer that demo as hard as they possibly can. Even if this scares off all the other demographics (a la pink stars for Dog training games, or Doom in blood a la FPS). This "Wii is for everyone" stuff is just absolutely throwing people for loops. It's for grandpas! No, it's for soccer moms! No, it's for non gamers! Wait, no, it's really for girls, who may also be non gamers!

Stop! Just stop. The correct answer is: it's for everyone. That's what Wii Sports has shown us. That's what Mario Kart has wrought. I understand why third parties are struggling so mightiliy though: it doesn't just require third parties to make different games, it requires them to approach game design differently in a much broader sense.

I saw a little girl in the games section of KMart yesterday.

"Mummy I want this one it comes with a bag! Oh look they've got more over here! *gasp* they have gymnast! I want gymnast too! Can we get both?"

I was impressed. Ubisoft really knew what they were doing with this Imagine shit.