The new data also reveals that 45% of Xbox owners and 41% of PS5 owners are female, too
This really shouldn’t be news and it certainly shouldn’t be surprising to anyone, but yes, new data from Circana shows that—as we told you in 2017—women play video games. In fact, more than half of all Switch owners are women. And a very vocal bunch of idiots are reacting about as well as you’d expect to this “revelation.”
I read some digital market reports a few years back, which showed that something like 98% of all people between 13-18 were gaming. Obviously mostly casual games, but nevertheless paying consumers of games. More female than male by a close margin.
When I discussed it on another gaming forum they were really quick to dismiss casual games altogether, despite it being the very largest group. There’s probably still a male majority in desktop first person shooters, which seemed to be the only “correct” gamers according to he kind of people following that kind of forum. Anyway, if I were to program a game I surely wouldn’t aim at the “stereotypical” gamer. They’re a minority with very high demands and very expensive gear. The whole stereotype is gatekept to the point where I don’t want to participate neither as a gamer or as developer.
I have to wonder if some of it comes from the idea that casual games are generally a different audience than “core” games. Like someone playing candy crush on their phone is counted as someone who plays games, but I wouldn’t lump them in with the kinda person that at least casually follows the industry and picks up a few new games for their PS5 every year or the person that is super active in the indie scene.
Don’t quote me on this bc I do not remember the source but I remember reading somewhere that if you included the whole gaming market, women were a clear majority because of mobile but many many mobile gamers did not self-identify as gamers which I think probably skews other surveys/studies targeted at “gamers”