Female Gamers to Slowly Go Away, Says Analyst

01/23/09

Companies like Ubisoft are trying to get a piece of the female demographic with games like Fashion Designer, Movie Star and Babyz, and it's hard to deny that Nintendo is going pretty hardcore after the mommy blogs and female demographic too. But that strategy may turn out to backfire, if they have been putting all their eggs in one basket, according to research from an industry group.

According to industry research firm IBISWorld, demand from the female demographic is expected to slow in the not-too-distant future. By 2013, IBISWorld expects female gamers to represent around 41 percent of all gamers.

This prediction may give pause to game publishers and hardware manufacturers, who could face some significant re-tooling of their marketing strategies to once again reach the demographic that's traditionally been their most loyal and most important: young male gamers.

There are two primary reasons for this decrease in females' adoption of gaming. First, the recession is hurting female spending on games more than male spending. Male gamers are more inclined to consider gaming as a compulsory expense than women, for whom it is unequivocally a luxury.

Second, the popularity of communal games such as Guitar Hero, SingStar and just about everything on the Wii has been far more popular than strictly female-oriented games, which has skewed the fast ratio changes of female to male gamers and thus reduced the female demographic's overall impact -- a trend that IBISWorld says will continue to reduce females' impact on the industry.

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