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Forums - Microsoft Discussion - Microsoft might have touched the casual audience..

Snesboy said:
nojustno said:
see sig

No. Just no.

 

[see what I did there?]

That was almost as clever as what's in your Sig...



 



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sethnintendo said:

I think the Wii holds more attraction to girls/women than Microsoft can ever dream of for xbox even with NATAL.


So you're saying that if Microsoft can do things like Belly Dancing Game/Trainer that wouldn't automatically win them thousands of cool points from women... and tens of thousands of cool points from their significant other... especially if that significant other is a man.  They can easily do all the Wii Fit and Wii Sports stuff and I'm guessing that EA is going to be quick to port over their EA Fitness game.  Natal is a natural interface for exercising or learning things like Belly Dancing... I keep going to that belly dancing shit... but it is ingenious



chapset said:
Natal is for queers
Sony purple dildo is for men
grow up kid and stop being a troll


...wtf?...the only one being a troll is you. get over your self.



                                                                                                  
Zizzla_Rachet said:
MikeB told me that NATAL and Milo were just smoke and Mirrors....Why should I believe you guys?


I imagine that it was closely controlled.   I dont think that the three or so months they had with Natal was enough to get this thing up and running fully.  To be fair though it could recongnize that it couldn't understand what some of the user's input.  There are at leat 18 months of work left on this game... I'm impressed that they got as far as they did though



Adobo said:
natal is going to be hot... I wish we can hook this up on PC.. with the proper mod /drools

They already have this for PC. MS bought a company that specializes in it.



Past Avatar picture!!!

Don't forget your helmet there, Master Chief!

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mrstickball said:
sethnintendo said:
Seraphic_Sixaxis said:
mrstickball said:

I don't think it's that women would rather play Wii Sports, or Mario Kart.

It's more of the fact that women would rather play bowling, or a kart racing game, regardless of who's branded it. Look at Carnival Games and EA Sports Active, as well as The Sims.

It's not the game - Animal Crossing, Sims, Mario Kart, Wii Sports, Wii Fit, but the activities they are.

Nintendo has been lucky to be the ones to majorly promote such games, and has been rewarded richly. However, I don't think that means that they are the only one that can do it, just the ones that do it right very often for their user base.

Well said, i was just about to say something along those lines.

Points taken.  I suppose Nintendo has just released games in genres that girls find more interesting.  The other companies are catching on and realizing that more and more girls/women are interested in gaming than they might have first thought.  It isn't like Sony and Microsoft neglected them entirely but they didn't really put too much effort at the start/over the past few years.  Sure some women love to play FPS, sports, etc.. but a majority are probably more into Sims type games, Kart racing, bowling, etc..

Correct. I don't think many would argue that Nintendo hasn't done more for the female gaming crowd than MS and Sony combined. And that's been the problem: New genres and games have emerged over the past 5-6 years that target female gamers more than ever before. The secret of this decade has been that it's the decade of the female gamer.

I'd venture to bet that in the 90's, the typical console demo was 90% male, and 10% female...While it's now getting closer to 60/40 in favor of males. The secret isn't that men are shying away from gaming, but Female are taking their rightful place as counterparts in the gaming community. And why this surge? Not because their preferences have changed, but Nintendo, primarily, marketed towards them.

Another good example, I think, of a 3rd party really reaching out to them would be the music & rhytmn games like Rock Band, Guitar Hero, and Singstar. I've regularly seen women fighting over control of the game because it was intuitive, and something they enjoyed. And guess what? Rock Band and Guitar Hero supercede many big franchises in terms of revenue like Madden.

Every company needs a balanced strategy to get both male and female gaming audiences, just like the movies do. Not every movie is targeted to a 50/50 male/female audience, with 50/50 being over/under 30 years of age. Some moives, like a Crank 2, are absolutely designed for male audiences, while anything with Matthew McCaughahey (SP?) is probably catering to ladies....Is that a bad thing? No. Because theater dollars don't change if a guy or girl spends them. Hopefully game companies are learning the same thing.

And I don't think it really just comes down to genres, but style choices, and making games intuitive. Kingdom Hearts is pretty popular among females I know, but it's still a pretty solid RPG. Kudos to SE about stylizing it to garner a bigger, more inclusive audience. Even under Wagamama Fashion: Girls Mode lies a very solid business simulator...It's just covered in glitter and beads.

Wow, this again. well agreed. ima have to start discussing stuff with you more...

 

Although KH is overrated by now...



@mrstickball, I agree with seraphic that you made good points again especially the marketing / style choices for the genres.

@cueil, I suppose a belly dancing / hula hoop type mini game would be nice to watch women preform. Isn't there a hula hoop game on Wii Fit? I might have to purchase that if that is the case. My statement as a little exaggeration but I do believe that Nintendo has more of a lock down on the women market as of now. It could easily change though depending on how well Sony and Microsoft pursue the women audience. I believe they will try harder considering when they see how much money Nintendo is raking in off them. I am sure Nintendo will try pretty hard to hold onto them as consumers though. It will be interesting but there is one thing for sure. Women gaming is serious business.



mrstickball said:

I don't think it's that women would rather play Wii Sports, or Mario Kart.

It's more of the fact that women would rather play bowling, or a kart racing game, regardless of who's branded it. Look at Carnival Games and EA Sports Active, as well as The Sims.

It's not the game - Animal Crossing, Sims, Mario Kart, Wii Sports, Wii Fit, but the activities they are.

Nintendo has been lucky to be the ones to majorly promote such games, and has been rewarded richly. However, I don't think that means that they are the only one that can do it, just the ones that do it right very often for their user base.

I agree with the first part - the brand isn't so important, as much as the actual game.

The bolded, not so much. It's the other way around - Nintendo isn't lucky for promoting them, they promoted those type of games because nobody else does. It's also true that they're not the only ones who can do it, but so far, there have been very few exceptions.



mrstickball said:
sethnintendo said:
Seraphic_Sixaxis said:
mrstickball said:

I don't think it's that women would rather play Wii Sports, or Mario Kart.

It's more of the fact that women would rather play bowling, or a kart racing game, regardless of who's branded it. Look at Carnival Games and EA Sports Active, as well as The Sims.

It's not the game - Animal Crossing, Sims, Mario Kart, Wii Sports, Wii Fit, but the activities they are.

Nintendo has been lucky to be the ones to majorly promote such games, and has been rewarded richly. However, I don't think that means that they are the only one that can do it, just the ones that do it right very often for their user base.

Well said, i was just about to say something along those lines.

Points taken. I suppose Nintendo has just released games in genres that girls find more interesting. The other companies are catching on and realizing that more and more girls/women are interested in gaming than they might have first thought. It isn't like Sony and Microsoft neglected them entirely but they didn't really put too much effort at the start/over the past few years. Sure some women love to play FPS, sports, etc.. but a majority are probably more into Sims type games, Kart racing, bowling, etc..

Correct. I don't think many would argue that Nintendo hasn't done more for the female gaming crowd than MS and Sony combined. And that's been the problem: New genres and games have emerged over the past 5-6 years that target female gamers more than ever before. The secret of this decade has been that it's the decade of the female gamer.

I'd venture to bet that in the 90's, the typical console demo was 90% male, and 10% female...While it's now getting closer to 60/40 in favor of males. The secret isn't that men are shying away from gaming, but Female are taking their rightful place as counterparts in the gaming community. And why this surge? Not because their preferences have changed, but Nintendo, primarily, marketed towards them.

Another good example, I think, of a 3rd party really reaching out to them would be the music & rhytmn games like Rock Band, Guitar Hero, and Singstar. I've regularly seen women fighting over control of the game because it was intuitive, and something they enjoyed. And guess what? Rock Band and Guitar Hero supercede many big franchises in terms of revenue like Madden.

Every company needs a balanced strategy to get both male and female gaming audiences, just like the movies do. Not every movie is targeted to a 50/50 male/female audience, with 50/50 being over/under 30 years of age. Some moives, like a Crank 2, are absolutely designed for male audiences, while anything with Matthew McCaughahey (SP?) is probably catering to ladies....Is that a bad thing? No. Because theater dollars don't change if a guy or girl spends them. Hopefully game companies are learning the same thing.

And I don't think it really just comes down to genres, but style choices, and making games intuitive. Kingdom Hearts is pretty popular among females I know, but it's still a pretty solid RPG. Kudos to SE about stylizing it to garner a bigger, more inclusive audience. Even under Wagamama Fashion: Girls Mode lies a very solid business simulator...It's just covered in glitter and beads.

 

Throughout most of the NES and SNES generation the split between male and female gamers was fairly even, and at the end of the generation (and through the following generation) there was an increasing focus on teenage and young adult male gamers. There are many reasons for this shift, but the core reason was that as games pushed to be more complicated and story driven few games targeted at girls and women were successful on home consoles ... Many of their attempts were particularly poor, and many publishers believed that objectified female lead characters in action-oriented violent videogames would appeal to women (which was a foolish assumption).

Women and girls didn't (entirely) give up on gaming, but their focus shifted to different areas which are rarely paid attention to. Several years ago, when Nintendo was about to launch the Gameboy Advance, one of their claims was that 60% of Gameboy owners were female and over 50% of those girls were above the age of 21. The PC has also remained a fairly decent refuge for female gamers over that period as companies (like Pop-Cap games, and Games Cafe) have produced simple games that were heavily targeting female gamers for quite some time.



sethnintendo said:
@mrstickball, I agree with seraphic that you made good points again especially the marketing / style choices for the genres.

@cueil, I suppose a belly dancing / hula hoop type mini game would be nice to watch women preform. Isn't there a hula hoop game on Wii Fit? I might have to purchase that if that is the case. My statement as a little exaggeration but I do believe that Nintendo has more of a lock down on the women market as of now. It could easily change though depending on how well Sony and Microsoft pursue the women audience. I believe they will try harder considering when they see how much money Nintendo is raking in off them. I am sure Nintendo will try pretty hard to hold onto them as consumers though. It will be interesting but there is one thing for sure. Women gaming is serious business.
Belly Dancing is a little more complex than using a hula hoop....  Just imagine this with the motion sensing to detect if you're doing it right.  Plus it's totally f'n hot.