Nintendo Dominates the Female Console Gaming Market

Nintendo, to its credit, has been hugely successful with the Wii, selling over 56 million units worldwide so far. Much of this success has been driven by an audience expansion, which has attracted more "non-gamers" into the fold, including tons of women and girls who might not have been console gamers in the past. Nintendo recently shared some new data points (as spotted by Kotaku) on this trend.

Looking at the total base of U.S. "primary players" (which are defined as the main users of consoles in their homes), Nintendo said that the total population has about 33.3 million primary male players compared to 11.7 million female primary players. That doesn't include female DS players or PC players. 

That statistic by itself isn't a big shock; we know that more and more women are gamers today. In fact, according to a survey recently pointed out by the ESA, 47% of respondents said that women are the intended gift recipient of a video game product this holiday, which is a 31% increase from 2007. What's more eyebrow raising, however, is to what degree Nintendo controls the female market. About 80% of the female primary players base owns a Wii. That translates into about 9 million female Wii players.  "This didn't happen by accident," said Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime. "It's the result of a deliberate attempt to expand the market."

Depending on how you look at this data, it could be viewed as a major advantage or a big hurdle. Certainly, for Nintendo, it's been a big boon for the company's business. As for third parties, we can't help but think that this statistic is one of the reasons core games have been struggling.