Nintendo releases data on whos buying their products.... And???

Any thoughts on this?

Source

The ESRB has said 52% of Switch owners are women but Nintendo's data states otherwise.

This is similar to the Capcom survey that said 84% of their audience identity as Male..

Can we put to rest this ridiculous notion that half of gamers are female when we're not counting mobile ( cell phone) games?

Wow, I thought more women gamed. I'm part of the purple sliver. Lol... The group that made Nintendo famous. Were so small now.

People over 45 don't really play games apparently, I guess that's when they stop having fun. Instead of playing games just start talking about them on YouTube and stir up some s***

I wonder if they have stats outside US?

I’m in the 3% in relation to age. Elite gamer status.

I'm in the 17% group. 40% of the gamers in my house are girls. Hopefully this chart doesn't end up on ResetEra. Whoever posts this will get banned for "sexism"

Half the switch owners might be female, but males play more and own more games, not really a contradiction?

So you're the other guy 😋. I'm one too.

11% of 600,000 out of a user base of roughly 130million is not a great sample.

It's strange they used an email survey since they could capture that using general Switch usage surely.

Not that insightful anyway.

@osan0: Us lucky few. 😅

Yeah, I’m kind of wondering just how reliable this data actually is.

That sample size is tiny, and the methodology isn't foolproof.

But hey, nice to see that I'm still in the 16-35 category.

"11% of 600,000 out of a user base of roughly 130million is not a great sample."

Yeah, the target demographic here would be "people who actually bother to take the time to respond to an email survey about video game usage". Which is a very small number of dudes age 25-44 apparently.

@osan0: "It's strange they used an email survey since they could capture that using general Switch usage surely."

Would probably be better, but even that data wouldn't be totally reliable. My wife and daughters all use my account when they play. Their 600 hours in Animal Crossing would all be counted as me :)

@girlusocrazy: I'll be in my 40s this year and I'll still game till my body slowly decays. Or rather till the ends of time.

@davillain: That's what I thought it would be like but maybe a lot of quitters out there! Or maybe people just don't feel like wasting time on surveys after a certain age.

Maybe the real news here is how many people still bother to check their email.

People need to use discernment when looking at polls, studies, or surveys as they are often manipulated by those who conduct them (political or public opinion polls conducted by media outlets, and studies funded by think tanks should be taken with a grain of salt). Also, look who are funding these polls, studies, or surveys as they are often not done in an unbiased way. Lastly, look at the methods used in a poll, study, or survey as they can tell whether it is reliable or not.

I would be wary that a survey is conducted by Nintendo as its results who favor Nintendo and it would remove or downplay anything it does not like. I would rather see a more-represented survey done by a third-party using better methods other than e-mail.

Give mario guns

And add some hot babes

@onesiphorus: My question is the accuracy of these surveys. I imagine if done off the Nintendo website, it can be skewed if fewer females are doing surveys online.

I find it hard to believe that few females are on Nintendo Switch - because contrary to the survey, in real life the male to female ratio seems more split, but that's just personal observation.

Backfired thread.

I guess that's when their families or careers takes priority. Talking and stirring up s*** counts as a career potentially.

We should get tattoos.... 3%ers

I wonder if the sliver is so small because people really do just kind of lose interest as life draws on... Or whether our generation just hasn't populated that age bracket and it'll continue to grow.

I will say that I would not be surprised if when I begin post career phase two of life that games could be left behind.

I can also see myself casually playing till my last day. It's importance in my life has dwindled, but it's because I've cultivated other interest that really mean something to me.

I'm in the majority for both charts. I guess I'm nothing special.

You're special to us dude....

Same brother

52 years young, started gaming when I received a "Pong" console for Christmas, 1977. Never stopped, never will.

@cainetao11: Pretty much same here. Soon to be 54. Remember playing around with Pong back in the day, messing around with arcade games, then graduating to the Atari 2600. Can’t see myself not gaming.

Absolutely not old friend. Im approaching 53 myself this year and now that I have Veterans credit with worldwide PX, Im ordering a PS5 today. The streak of owning both every gen continues.

lolol :P

How many of the 40% are actually children using adult accounts without parental controls though?

Very misleading for a number of reasons:

1. It's an outdated study from 2017, which is 8 years ago and just a few months after the Switch launched.
2. The question is asking who has the strongest desire to buy a Switch in the household, not who plays Switch in the household. Boys wanting to buy a Switch the most doesn't mean girls don't play Switch as well.
3. Animal Crossing brought in a massive female audience in 2020. This study is from years before Animal Crossing.

The ESRB study is more reliable. It's more recent, from two years ago. And more importantly, it asks the more relevant question of who actually plays Switch games, not who has the most desire to buy a Switch.

Another, more recent study from Ipsos UK's GameTrack made the same findings last year:

47% of UK Nintendo Switch players are women

That's two relatively recent independent studies in both the US and UK which found around half of the Switch user base are female.

This survey was given in 2017. Men are more likely to be early adopters.

It was done in 2017. Men are more likely to be early adopters

That's possible. I think Animal Crossing really opened the floodgates for widening demographics as well, and that didn't come out until several years after Switch launch.

So TC is using a survey from 2017? Good grief. 🤦‍♂️😂

Not only that, but a survey conducted via e-mail is not a reliable method. People should not blindly believe what a survey, study, or poll say as most use unreliable methods and more likely skewed to support an agenda of some kind.

This 2017 survey is flawed in many ways.

You are correct. This is what happens when agenda is the driving force.

What agenda does Nintendo have exactly? None of you have provided a single study are survey that provides better data 🤣

The only data that counters this factors in mobile gaming. The others give no details in how they acquired their data.

I was curious how people in the industry can continue to make the same mistakes and you are giving me my answer.

How is it more reliable exactly?

It says nothing about the sample size or how they acquired the data.

Yeah, and also Circana (formerly NPD)'s survey in 2023 shows that 52% of Switch owners in US were women.

I agree that Animal Crossing brought in a massive female audience, and if I may add:

• Animal Crossing: New Horizons and New Leaf are made by a team that is almost half female, led by a female director named Aya Kyogoku.
• AC: New Horizons is not only one of the best-selling Nintendo games, but also the best-selling female-directed game in video game history, surpassing Amy Henning's Uncharted trilogy combined. (only 2 people in the running, btw)
• The recent Pokémon games (Sun & Moon / Sword & Shield / Scarlet & Violet) were designed by a female illustrator named Take. These are among the most popular video games in the world to be illustrated by a female artist.
• The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, featuring the series' first Princess Zelda, was directed by Tomomi Sano, the first female director in the LoZ series.
• Mario & Luigi: Brothership was designed by a female art director, Hitomi Furuta, who brought a new style to traditional Mario.
• Fire Emblem Engage was also designed by a female illustrator, Mika Pikazo.
• Nintendo continues to focus on releasing games with female protagonists, such as Princess Peach: Showtime and Metroid Prime 4.

While the Switch's success has a lot to do with its combination of handheld and console, I think the combination of female creators/artists/characters in its video game development is an equally important factor in its appeal to a diverse user base. It's a shame that companies only trying to mimic the Switch's superficial hardware are missing that key element, haha.

I believe half of Switch gamers are female, I Just think they game on their male partner's Switch 😋

@elderlord99 said:

Any thoughts on this?

Source

The ESRB has said 52% of Switch owners are women but Nintendo's data states otherwise.

This is similar to the Capcom survey that said 84% of their audience identity as Male..

Can we put to rest this ridiculous notion that half of gamers are female when we're not counting mobile ( cell phone) games?

This is just Nintendo, though.

If you think half the people that own switches are female you are delusional.

@mrbojangles25 said:

I believe half of Switch gamers are female, I Just think they game on their male partner's Switch 😋

@elderlord99 said:

Any thoughts on this?

Source

The ESRB has said 52% of Switch owners are women but Nintendo's data states otherwise.

This is similar to the Capcom survey that said 84% of their audience identity as Male..

Can we put to rest this ridiculous notion that half of gamers are female when we're not counting mobile ( cell phone) games?

This is just Nintendo, though.

You're right. My wife would say she plays the Switch because she likes Mario Kart... however she didn't buy it nor would she.

The ESRB factors in mobile gaming... candy crush, brick out etc.

Source: https://kotaku.com/half-gamers-women-switch-ps5-xbox-pc-owners-girls-stats-1850524629

First, Piscatella revealed that, so far in 2023, according to Circana’s PlayerPulse (a monthly study tracking consumer awareness and engagement), a lot of women are playing games on all platforms under the sun. Specifically, 47% of console video game players, 50% of PC video game players, and 54% of mobile video game players are female. And all three of these stats are up 1% versus last year.

Piscatella then posted more data about how many women own specific consoles in the United States. 41% of PS5s in the US and 45% of Xbox Series X/S consoles are owned by women according to Circana’s monthly analysis and surveys. More interesting is that over half—52%—of Switch owners in the US are women.

And can you provide the methodology into how they came to that conclusion?

@elderlord99:

Here is what Circana (NPD) says about their survey.

Circana's (formerly The NPD Group's) PlayerPulse is our monthly study tracking consumer awareness and engagement conducted across a rotating sample of approximately 10k US households tracking demographics, engagement, ownership, purchase intent, social media use, etc.

For these numbers quoted: n = 10,184

For people interested in PlayerPulse:

Frequency: Monthly

First Data Captured: Jan 1 2017

Methodology: Circana conducts a monthly survey of US active gamers over the age of 13. Surveys are fielded online, via PC and mobile devices, drawing from a nationally representative pool. Respondents qualify on the basis of having played games in the past month (30 days).

To ensure consistency across samples and correct for any biases/errors, Circana implements a weighting system for each monthly dataset based on representative distributions of platform use and platform investment.

Circana’s models are based on aggregated, cross-product samples, and are updated quarterly to account for market shifts.

(Quoted from a Reddit post)

So 10,000 people monthly?

In the year 2023 that would be 120,000 people which is a far smaller sample size then the 600,000 people. Not to mention it's asking if you played a Switch game in the last 30 days not if you bought one. This is what I'm talking about. By this survey my wife and I are both Switch gamers 🤣

If they had continued to survey 10K households per month, or 120K households per year, "across a rotating sample" starting in 2017 when the Switch was launched, the sample size would be about 720K households in 2023, 6 years from that point. Of course, as with any statistic, there is a margin of error, but the sample size is not small as a percentage of the US gaming population.

The qualification of having played a game in the "last 30 days" is meant to confirm that the sample is the gaming population. As noted in the first paragraph, the survey also specifically includes "demographics" and "ownership," so if your wife doesn't own one, she wouldn't be counted even if she played on it.

It's a fact that the number of female Switch users has exploded over the years, especially with the huge success of Animal Crossing, which was released in 2020 compared to the 2017 data you presented. If you have enough alternative data to negate the Circana (NPD) data as of 2023, I suggest you present it.

Yea that's not how it works.

If I own a Switch and my wife plays it she qualifies as an owner. If a dad owns it and has 3 daughters they qualify as owners. Based off their methodology this does not mean 52% of women own a Switch. If a 15 year old plays her dad's Switch she is most likely going to consider herself an owner considering it's based off a survey. Anybody can consider themselves an owner on a survey.

This is a much more logical explanation in the massive gaps in the data. The Nintendo survey focuses on who buys it vs the Circana survey who focuses on " owners".which will be anyone in the household that uses it. And a user us classified as anyone who played it in the past 30 days.

@elderlord99 said:

@mrbojangles25 said:

I believe half of Switch gamers are female, I Just think they game on their male partner's Switch 😋

@elderlord99 said:

Any thoughts on this?

Source

The ESRB has said 52% of Switch owners are women but Nintendo's data states otherwise.

This is similar to the Capcom survey that said 84% of their audience identity as Male..

Can we put to rest this ridiculous notion that half of gamers are female when we're not counting mobile ( cell phone) games?

This is just Nintendo, though.

You're right. My wife would say she plays the Switch because she likes Mario Kart... however she didn't buy it nor would she.

The ESRB factors in mobile gaming... candy crush, brick out etc.

Your wife isn't everyone. Women play games, and you're having a meltdown over it.

@luxuryheart said:

@elderlord99 said:

@mrbojangles25 said:

I believe half of Switch gamers are female, I Just think they game on their male partner's Switch 😋

@elderlord99 said:

Any thoughts on this?

Source

The ESRB has said 52% of Switch owners are women but Nintendo's data states otherwise.

This is similar to the Capcom survey that said 84% of their audience identity as Male..

Can we put to rest this ridiculous notion that half of gamers are female when we're not counting mobile ( cell phone) games?

This is just Nintendo, though.

You're right. My wife would say she plays the Switch because she likes Mario Kart... however she didn't buy it nor would she.

The ESRB factors in mobile gaming... candy crush, brick out etc.

Your wife isn't everyone. Women play games, and you're having a meltdown over it.

Sure they do but nowhere near half of console gamers are female. That fact seems to hurt people's feelings eventhough it's glaringly obvious. However we do know certain people struggle with common sense.

17%, but soon I’ll be going into the 3% range.

I just know it. 😀

The survey does not work that way. If you were to ask strictly about ownership, the answer for a wife or daughter playing on her husband's or parent's Switch would be "not owned". But there is another category of "engagement" that Circana looks at, so they would be counted as "Switch players". But even if the survey was flawed for some reason and they were counted as Switch owners, it still shows that more women are playing the Switch, which I don't think is inherently a problem.

I'm not dismissing Nintendo's 2017 data at all, and I'm not necessarily arguing that Circana's 2023 data is completely accurate. But again, it's true that the number of female Switch users has exploded with Animal Crossing since 2020, and if you have data that disproves that, I'm just asking you to show me.