The numbers don't lie: Women love Nintendo

At a recent BMO Capital Markets event for gaming companies and investors this month, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fil-Aime took the stage to share up some numbers that proved something no one had been doubting -- female consumers prefer the Wii to any other home platform by a staggering margin.

Based on their own internal research (take that for what it's worth, bias-watchers) Nintendo estimates that there are 11.7 million female "primary players" in the gaming market. Primary players, in this instance, means people who have purchased the console or who the console was purchased for. This doesn't include your aunt, sister, or niece that's happy to play a few rounds of Carnival Games when they come over to the house. It's the number of female players who claim the household console as their own.

Compared to the 33.3 million male primary players, this makes up about 1/4 of the console market (which the chart above, used as part of Reggie's presentation, illustrates nicely). It speaks volumes for the industry that women are becoming such a key demographic, and definitely helps illustrate gaming's increasing acceptance by previously untapped markets.

Much to no one's surprise, Reggie's next set of numbers reminded us of which console manufacturer is hosting Ladies Night every night;

According to Nintendo's own research (again -- keep that in mind here), 80% of female gamers picked the Wii as their console of choice.

It's not at all surprising to hear that Nintendo has take such a triumphant lead in the female demographic -- after all, they're the only company actively courting it. In fact the only number that really surprised us was the 20% that were purchasing the 360 or PS3 over the Wii.

Gaming has, until fairly recently, been viewed as a predominantly male hobby. Seeing such high adoption rates of consoles not directly aimed at the female consumer was both surprising and delightful. Maybe our little hobby can grow out of its "teenage boy" persona yet.

[via Kotaku]

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