Thats really interesting, since there was one of the articles on here where a developer stated that the majority owner of Wiis are young males. Im confused. Maybe EVERYONE owns a Wii in Japan?

@ringo
no it's that you chose to interpret everything differently than the context that was provided.

your original comment:

And if Nintendo is grabbing women's attention in proportion to men's, do they really need to focus more on that demographic? Their strategy is to hit all demographics with every game (not true), and it's obviously paying off. Seems to me that Sony and MS should be worrying about appealing more to women... (don't know why you are including sony or ms in this)

my answer

well ringo, for one, in Japan, the demographic with the most disposable income is women about 16-30.
more appeal to women=higher sales

You said: So you think that Nintendo, rather than trying to appeal to everybody, should appeal specifically to women. (I never said that) Do you think there's more money in a game that targets women specifically, even if it alienates potential male buyers?

ringo I think the lesson that we've learned from Nintendo this gen is that no matter what game comes out and who it's targeted at, it will not dissuade other people from buying the system. (this was in response to your alienating buyers comment)
I think there are already a lot of games on the Wii that target women. None of the wii owners here seem to be any less enthusiastic about the system. (This is to counter your "games that appeal to every demographic argument as well as counter that no male buyers have been alienated)
The bigger problem is that there just aren't enough games that target men (this should say specifically and that is my fault that i felt that out). As long as making a game that targets women doesn't cause another male-targeted game to be canceled, it should be fine. (This last part is my own opinon of the wii, that I will still buy one as long as they don't give up on strictly male type games)

This is where I don't know what happened to you:

Who are we talking about here? I thought we were talking about Nintendo, since that's the only company the OP names.I can't even think of a Wii game Nintendo has made which targets women. (I think you meant to write "specifically" here because according to your original statement, each game appeals to both sexes. Also, in the context of your final argument I don't understand here how target and appeal is really that different in meaning that it decides an entire argument)Do you think Wii Music or Animal Crossing would have sold better if it specifically targeted women? (Here, despite me talking about multiple games that in no way affected each other, you talk about making a game more appealing to women, instead of just making more games that appeal to women)

So I wrote:

Oh, are we talking first party? (responding to your assertation that there aren't any wii games that target women)
Immediately I would say Wii fit, animal crossing.... I'm sure there are others.(evidence) Those of course are up for debate, but not an interesting one. (you can always say that they can appeal to both men and women but you can really say that about anything to varying levels of degree where no degree is exactly outlined officially), but I don't know why. The commercials for animal crossing had 2 women talking to each other while they played the game online. Commercials usually are pointed directly at the demographic, by using the demographic in it. I'm sure you know that already, I'm just backing up my point.(already explained)Honestly I don't know what appeals to women as far as gaming is concerned. The only game that I know that girls love is <Maximum Risky Alert> hide the penis. jk...but there is that wiibrator thingamajig....Japanese girls like dating games and online social games. In Japan, some women actually get paid to play games online with "boyfriends". But like I said, I really wouldn't know how to appeal more to women. (This part is more of a response to you saying games should appeal to women MORE. This response is saying... I don't know how it would be done because I thought wii fit and those kinds of games did target women as  much as possible. There really is no definitive "girl's game" so we can only say that these "male/female-targ

@ringo
no it's that you chose to interpret everything differently than the context that was provided.

your original comment:

And if Nintendo is grabbing women's attention in proportion to men's, do they really need to focus more on that demographic? Their strategy is to hit all demographics with every game (not true), and it's obviously paying off. Seems to me that Sony and MS should be worrying about appealing more to women... (don't know why you are including sony or ms in this)

my answer

well ringo, for one, in Japan, the demographic with the most disposable income is women about 16-30.
more appeal to women=higher sales

You said: So you think that Nintendo, rather than trying to appeal to everybody, should appeal specifically to women. (I never said that) Do you think there's more money

 games are female targeted games, if we talk about games as male vs female)

You wrote:

Nope. Try again. (try again what?)Using your logic, Metroid Prime 3, Fatal Frame 4, Guitar Hero and the DS itself also target women, since they've all had ads featuring only women using them. (Umm, yeah, they are trying to sell the games to women, a lot of women own the console and play these games, therefore they show ads of them playing the game. However, the big difference between my example and yours is that mine showed ONLY women and yours show 1 women out of 4 or 5 people) I think you'll have a hard time backing up that position.You're confusing marketing with game development. (games are developed to be sold to a market and ads help that market know the game is out and tries to get them to buy it)Just because an ad for a game targets a demographic, it doesn't necessarily follow that the game also does (Any evidence of that? Haven't you seen that comcast commercial where they will help businesses target the right customers by time slots? That is a simplified idea of how it works. You don't just randomly throw whatever you want into a commercial. What do you think masters and doctorates in marketing are just throwing darts at a board? Especially when Nintendo is the one doing the marketing?). All of the above products, including Wii Fit and Animal Crossing, are designed to appeal to both genders (or at least, not to alienate one of them), and there is a big difference between making a product which appeals to a demographic and one which targets a specific demographic. (this part I agree and disagree. They are designed to appeal to both without alienating the other. What I disagree with is that you think you can't target more than one thing.. This is where you establish your semantics argument which is simply a bad argument. Especially because my orignal argument was to make more games that "target" women and not target women to a greater degree.)All Nintendo products are designed to appeal to as broad a demographic as possible ("as possible" is a very broad operating phrase here), because to target a specific one is to throw away potential sales to other demographics. Making something for half the population is daft if you could sell it to the whole population by broadening its appeal. (right, I think this is getting to the crux of the argument, which I will establish here.)

this is a gradation from male to female appeal

IIIII     IIII    III     II     I     II     III     IIII     IIIII

      F                    O      O      O                       M

                            O                  X                    M

since there really are no games in the F area, and most games are in the M area. I consider the O area to be female targetted. I made a second row to show actual games that come out. X being the area between wii fit or cooking mama type games, and GeoW/SplinterCell type games.

This is why in my next post I wrote

"Why don't you try telling me what a game for women is smartass." (My real argument here is that you are saying that female games don't exist because they are actual "broad appeal" games, mind the pun. So I want to know what you think a woman's game would then be, since games like wii fit and animal crossing are not)

To which you said:

I suggest you ask Ubisoft. They're the only company I've seen talk about exclusively targeting women.

I responded:

no, i'm not going to go ask ubisoft. Since you seem to think there are no games targetting women I want you to tell me what you think a game like that would be if not wii fit.It is plainly obvious that games like wii fit or animal crossing are for both genders, and it is so obvious I don't know why you waste your time even talking about it as a point. The other games you mentioned had ads with mixed genders playing the games, which you failed to mention. While you could make the same point about wii fit, I think that wii fit may have close to an equal distribution 50% female to male. you are the one with the argument who is cherry picking arguments. I told you plain and simple that targetting women will make more money and you simply cannot accept that. Either make a compelling argument or just drop it.Right now where the argument stands, you need to tell me how they are not targetting women, because that is your whole point and if you can't back up your point, then you had no point to begin with. (this is all explained by my preceeding arguments)

Here you say:

You're the one who can't understand the difference between targeting women and appealing to women. (If I make a decision to appeal to women, doesn't that mean I'm targeting them?) I'm getting tired of repeating myself, so this is the last time I will explain it to you.The difference is that targeting excludes while appealing does not (Umm, how bout no Scott, it doesn't mean that. You can target something that also targets others by residual effect). World of Warcraft appeals to women. Ubisoft's Imagine series targets women. That's why you'll find lots of males playing World of Warcraft alongside women, and almost none playing Imagine games. Nintendo does not target women, it appeals to them. (If we look back at my chart, depending on where along the spectrum you target, you can get whatever ratio of males to female you want.) This is a superior strategy because you leave the other 49% of the market open to enjoy your product. The only way Nintendo is going to get women users much higher than 50% is by targeting them and driving away potential male customers. Ergo, it is a bad strategy. (whats interesting here is that you say "superior strategy" which makes me wonder if your whole argument is looking through the eyes of Nintendo vs HD...... really sad, when I was explaining in the first place why it was a good idea to do what they do and you have no reason to refer to the other consoles for the second time in the discussion)

So I say:

congratulations now we are talking semantics. But i guess that is your o

So I say:

congratulations now we are talking semantics. But i guess that is your only argument to begin with. (Your argument now solely rests on targeting meaning exclusion of other demographics)
I guess they just appeal to women by chance, because there obviously was no "targetting"- targetting meaning to aim at a certain direction. (At this point I am really tired of your argument and I pose a quetion sarcastically. How does something appeal to something if it was not designed that way?)

What I like about those WoW commercials is that they all feature men (shatner, troyer, Mr.T, ozzy) I guess it is just coincidence though. (another sarcastic comment. Obviously I am really tired and I'm done with being polite. This is evidence against your "Just because an ad for a game targets a demographic, it doesn't necessarily follow that the game also does" argument) PS: What you need to understand is that, for the most part, advertising will try to come close to the ratio of demographic that the product "appeals" to. In that way it is easy to estimate the demographic of a product by looking at who the ads "target". This is all scholarly written fundamentals and journal articles so I wouldn't expect anyone to know this. I am just trying to inform whoever wants to know. (This is all proven material, I am backing up my point with facts again to really try and drive the point home)

Your last reply:

I know, it's frustrating how these words we use actually mean certain things. (apparently you don't know the meaning of some of them, like "target") And if you use the wrong words, people think your saying stuff you don't actually mean to say. (you mean like how I said that it was good to have games that appeal to women but you took it as me saying that nintendo should exclusively target women. Whats really funny is that your argument hinges on the word target but my original wording used "appeal" ROFL)But language is all scholarly and stuff, and so I don't expect you to know this. I'm just trying to inform you that when you use the word 'targeted' it means you're only trying to hit the specific target and not everything else around it. (A target can be in the middle of a spectrum. It doesn't have to be one or the other)

To summarize: Most of these misinterpretations were yours, as not only did you misquote me in the beginning, but you also misrepresented the commercials of the games you talked about. I think that at this point, your only argument is that "targeting is an act of exclusivity". If you find the answer to that problem, the answer I already know, you will understand why your argument is stupid.

Women do not play videogames where I live. They just don't.

You can ocasionaly see a few of them playing Tetris on their cellphone, or DDR, or Wii Sports, or attempting (and failing horribly) at anything else, but that's pretty much it.

I hear about women that play other things (like my beloved JRPGs) ALL THE TIME on the internet. But seeing as I have not met any of them, I believe they are all really just men going for lulz.

We have some pretty hot girls on this very site Johann....unless they are men going for lulz

women like good games like anyother gamer. Only fanboys would treat them like 2d rate customers.

seniors, I guess that simple, addictive games.

Games that attract women (that i've seen in stores, socials and with women that I know): Mario Galaxy, Mario Party 8, Mario Kart, Wario Ware: Smooth Moves, Wii Sports, Wii Fit. In essence they love party games and exercise tools.

thank you stage.